The Portfolio of Erik Mattijssen

18 December, 2004

You will not find many genuine drawing artists on the web. The collection of online portfolio’s on the net is dominated by illustrators and designers showcasing their pixelized skills with illustrator or photoshop. Often they can build slick (flashy) websites. But hey! ‘The Art of Drawing’ is really something else. There aren’t many around believe me.

The portfolio of Erik Mattijssen spans over a period of fifteen years and you can see where he’s coming from. My own portfolio on this site goes back to 2001. Of course there’s more but it’s not on line.
I really like to see where I was a few years ago, I often imagine a tin red line that I hold on to. I am aware this red line goes through all my works and attached to it are my themes and skills. It helps me not to wander away from the story I want to tell and what I want to show.

It’s very nice to see what Mattijssen has done before. Those years are like a prologue to the chapter where he is now. You see his work evolving and I not only mean that his skills get better. He is drawing austere still lives with twigs in 1993, very linear and precize. Slowly his drawings become populated and more colourfull. His still lives become interiors; Mattijssen steps back and with ordinary elements in out of place arrangements he shows us some very eerie scenes. There his use of colour really doesn’t feel that odd anymore and that’s where I like Mattijssen most.
Even when he’s drawing little flowers, eatables and botttles I keep wondering: “What is this man is actually brewing there, in his studio?”
www.erikmattijssen.nl

You see, it takes quite a few years to get somewhere. When I’m drawing there’s no rush, I am still in the prologue.

Sri Yantra

17 December, 2004

sriSearching images for ‘Sri Yantra’ in Google brought me to the experiment below where the yantra is projected into three dimensions. The Sri Yantra can be used to meditate upon. The small dot and focal point in the centre is named bindu.
The transverse triangles represent the volume expansion of bindu, the emergence of 3-D space, of the original nature, of creation.
This experiment with the 3-D yantra is a beautifull illustration of an article I stumbled upon last summer. I thought to put them together here:

“The universe was not there in the beginning. Or if it were there, what had then become of it? One view is that it had shrunk to a bindu. Bindu means point. The universe had contracted to a point. That is just it’s way, now it contracts; now it expands. It is a perpetual cycle stretched over bilions of human years. Expansion is creation and contraction is dissolution.

In geometry a point has position but no dimensions. The position of a thing is in relation to other things in space. Since bindu is the is the contraction of the whole universe, of the whole time-space-mind continuum, it can have no position. Since it has no dimension, and since it is the contraction of time-space-mind, the mind just cannot grasp it. For a three dimensional mind to grasp a thing, that thing has to be three dimensional too. For the mind a thing without dimensions doesn’t exist at all. that’s why the bindu is beyond comprehension and equal to nothing.

For the bindu to burst into being again, to stretch out it’s withdrawn dimensions and thus expand again it needs a bang-start. The form of this bang-start comes from desire. The bindu desired to expand again, to burst into being again, to be manifest and to multiply. Desire heated it up to a fireball bursting with desire. At the extreme height of heat and pressure it just exploded. This explosion of bindu is called Bindu Vishphota. The explosion stretched forth, well outside it’s withdrawn dimensions. It startes to expand. It ceased to be nothing. It bounced back into being.

The present 3-D space is the volume of expansion of bindu. This volume is called Saguna Brahm (dimensioned Brahmn). This Saguna Brahmn is the 3D-isation of Nirguna Brahm (dimensionless Brahmn) that is the original bindu. Saguna Brahmn and Moola Prakriti (the original nature) are one and the same.

All that occupies the 3-D space is it’s own local temporary warps. By warping itself Nature creates all. The triangles with their vertices represent the expansion of bindu- the emergence of 3D space of moola prakriti, of creation. What expands Bindu into volume is its Brimhita bang, represented by the space enclosed by the tranversed triangles and surounding bindu. ”

http://www.meru.org/Yantra.jpeg
Original text by K.M. Gupta in the Times of India someday last summer.
Images found with Google.


Bart Stuart says: “Be there”

13 December, 2004

bart saysThis invitation was in my mailbox today.
I’ll be there Bart.


 

No Title

11 December, 2004

just bePeople often wonder why I never give a title to my drawings.
There are several reasons; one is that I feel that a title will take some of the mystery out.
Many artists think a title adds something to the meaning of their work. It can explain something about their intentions and it gives a romantic or poetic touch to their art, thus hoping to make their doings deeper.
As for me and my work I think it doesn’t work that way. There?s not much more then the drawing and especially the act of drawing itself.
In modern art these days there?s a lot of concept and very little content, artists have very little to say. But content cannot be poured in from the outside. That is why I like the motto of this site: www.i-shot-u.com. “Words are the worst way to say what we have to say.”

 

November 2004.

8 December, 2004

uailab03 I did a little Q&A at Uailab, Inspiration for Designers.
Check it out at uailab.com (see artist section)
Uailab.com made and edited from Belo Horizonte, Brazil.

Thanx for the link at strangefruits.nl
Always something new at Strangefruits Art & Design portal, edited in Amsterdam, Holland.