Elma van Haren - SAFE

On a warm, ochre-colored background with patchy, almost weathered layers, like old parchment or a patinated wall, a bright blue, cross-like shape rises. It resembles a figure, a sword, or a totem, giving the work a powerful vertical axis. At the top hangs a round disc with sunbeams; to the right, a red, stylized form and two black, gear-like stars. Below, a broad, black loop cuts through the image like a raw brushstroke, bordered by a row of dots. Inside that loop stands a bronze-colored circle containing a Vitruvian human figure, and at the bottom, a small red elephant. In the field stands the word “SAFE,” half-hidden within the black line. The word “SAFE” establishes a tension: what is safe here, and against what? The Vitruvian figure, the ideal of man in perfect proportion, lies protected like a precious jewel within the black loop, as if the line forms a boundary, a pit, or an embrace. Above the loop, blue dominates, cutting through the image like a lightning bolt or a cross. The colors are earthy and layered: ochre, rust, and olive green form a tranquil whole, against which the intense blue and deep black speak all the more strongly. Collage, painting, and graphic elements flow into one another, with the sun, the gears, and the elephant as symbols that each carry their own story without imposing a single fixed interpretation. For the collector: A visually strong, symbolic work that impresses from a distance due to the blue and the black line, and reveals details up close: the fine drawing of the Vitruvian figure, the structures in the background, the little elephant. Framed in a gold-colored frame with a spacious white passe-partout, in portrait format, it comes into its own in a tranquil interior. A beautiful addition for anyone who appreciates art with its own, enigmatic visual language.
Elma van Haren (1954) is a Dutch poet and visual artist. She studied at the art academy in 's-Hertogenbosch under, among others, Eugene Brands and Ger Lataster. In 1988, her debut collection *De reis naar het welkom geheten* was published, for which she received the C. Buddingh' Prize at Poetry International in Rotterdam. In 1997, she received the Jan Campert Prize for the collection *Grondstewardess*. Since the poetry collection *De wiedeweerga* (1998), she has also written for children. Since 2003, she has been a jury member of the PC Hooft Prize. Her visual work is in the collection of the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, AMC, and important private collections in the Netherlands and Belgium. She was one of the artists in the exhibition *TEGENLICHT* at the SMAK in Ghent in 2010, alongside Honoré d'O, Narcisse Tordoir, Ann Veronica Janssens, Gert Robijns, and Jacques Charlier, among others.