Elma van Haren - WHALE 2

In this vibrant work, an almost dreamlike landscape unfolds, constructed from planes of pure color. To the left lies a pink wall strewn with small, playful signs: a spiral, crosses, wavy lines, arrows, and schematic figures, like a secret code that only the artist fully deciphers. A broad black stroke swirls through it like an arc, connecting the left zone with the central zone. In the heart of the work, a small, variegated sphere in red, yellow, and blue rests on a purple volume, a silent eye-catcher amidst all the movement. To the right of this rises a slender green pine, constructed from fine, dotted lines, while light green foliage hangs down above against a cool blue-gray background. At the bottom, a strip of colored planes closes off the whole, in teal with a diamond pattern, orange-red, ochre yellow, and gray, like an earth or floor upon which this universe rests. The work moves between abstraction and suggestion of landscape, between spontaneous gesture and thoughtful composition. The combination of soft, chalky planes, sharp black accents, and small, rhythmic details gives it a playful yet balanced energy. A colorful, layered work that will appeal to both lovers of contemporary expressive painting and collectors of intuitive, drawing-like 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, alongside Honoré d'O, Narcisse Tordoir, Ann Veronica Janssens, Gert Robijns, and Jacques Charlier, among others, in 2010.