Work description
The diversity and the archetypes of mountainous regions have a great appeal to me and I am fascinated by studying the mountains through painting.
Hence, I frequently travel to the Alps in Switzerland to study the scenery and get new inspiration. Apart from the Alps also other mountainous regions in Germany and other countries have increasingly caught my interest.
The mountain scenery offers many different perspectives through its varied landscape structures, surface textures and framing. Therefore the mountain sceneries for me have served as the framework within which I can study different elements.
As elements within this framework archetypal objects of a region have gained increasing importance for me. Archetypes such as the capricorn, typical trains and old buildings are recurrent elements in my paintings. These archetypal elements work as a kind of catalyst of my very personal perception of the mountain scenery. They give scale and identity to the landscape of which they form an inseparable part.
I reproduce these mountainous sceneries in compositions based on different perspectives such as the view on eye- level, worms’ eye views and bird’s eye views through which the perception of the landscape is enhanced.. In this process I experiment with different formats that represent a “window of perception” to my imaginary mountain worlds.
The clear light and colours of the coulisse- landscapes of the mountains are a main guiding theme in the process of painting. My work has a strong substanciality through the use of pastous oil paint. By working with thick layers of differently coloured paint I am inquiring the “skin” and tonality of the painting. My fascination for dim light, colour subtleties and perception of endless space that can be seen in the mountains at night makes me work on many nightscape paintings. They often consist of monochrome colours of green and blue tones that express a fairy-tale world and embrace the archetype elements that form the centre of the whole.
In my recent works I have studied many snow landscapes with diffuse lights and a broad scale of soft tones and variations. My work has become more objective and I have also started to experiment with motives from other mountain regions than the Alps and their archetypes.
Hjalmar Riemersma
Photography on this site by Henk Pijnenburg, Paul Kerhoffs and Serge Chamuleau |