Emmy Dijkstra

A couple of years ago I saw this movie about two friends who were traveling through
South-America on their motorcycles. Right after college. Before they are going to live their lives like responsible grown ups they first want to see what’s out there. But after their journey ends they parted. One of them decides to take another path in life; he gets into an airplane that brings him into the deep jungle. The one who stays behind watches him go. Beautiful scene; It always reminds me that you really should take your own path in life. Sometimes by airplane, bus or train or in your own home and mind.

Paper lithography, 30 x 40 cm, 2014

Sitting in the metro going through the night; still fully awake.

That’s what people say here at the end of the day: ‘jag åker hem’ which means ‘I go home’.

Twice a week I take pendeltåg 25 to Nacka Station to work at the printshop. Sometimes I can’t sleep at night, thinking of all the new places I go to, with names I had never heard of before and now those places have  become part of my daily life.

paper litho 2014

No matter where I am there will always be ‘mitt lilla hus’ to go back to. I think you can create a home everywhere. As long as you find books there to read and a table to work on.

paper litho 2014

My second print of my new series paper litho’s. I’m becoming more accustomed to my new life here in Sweden: like discovering ice flowers on my window and going Swedish lessons for immigrants.

paper litho, 2014

‘I wanted to become a writer but I had know idea what to write about’. The figure who is writing just moved to a new house in a new country and is surrounded by a landscape which he is not familiar with. He wants to become a writer and tell about his new impressions; the new people he has met. But where to start when it is all so overwhelming?

This drawing will be the start of a new series of prints. I finally know how to use all these new impressions I get every day by living in a new country. It is like as if the snow has clarified my thoughts.

From this day on I will print a paper litho every week and publish it on my blog and Facebook. This drawing will be a paper litho by the end of this week.

We will wait for your return with flowers in my hand. 2013

I’m more of a story teller then a painter who is building an image with paint. That’s what I tried to do with my paper litho printing, the last couple of weeks. First I was enjoying that, it felt free, then I started to feel  restless: where was my story? I just couldn’t see clear anymore. I could go on like this forever, but it wasn’t satisfying. Because the content of my story has always been more important rather than color, shape, composition.

So I came to the conclusion that I need some boundaries, that has always worked for me. Boundaries in time, technique, black/white etc. Now I’ll limit myself to one print per week. I always have very clear images in my head about the story I want to tell, but every time I go to the workshop I am tempted to use all the material that’s lying there and my original idea starts to fade away. So I’ll force myself to stick to the images in my head and try to make them visible in a series of prints.

At the moment I’m reading the books of Karl Ove Knausgård, a Norwegian writer who has written about his life in a series of six autobiographical novels; I’m almost done with the fourth book.
In the fourth novel he describes himself as a young man who wants to become a writer.

After his high school graduation he doesn’t go to university like his classmates, instead he has applied for a teaching job  somewhere in a small village all the way up north. He wants to be independant and earn money to achieve his greater goal in life: to become a writer.

As he desribes the village in such detail it is almost as if you are there, looking at the mountains and the sea and experience the snow and the darkness.
For me, as a visual artist it is inspiring to read, I recognize a little bit in this writer who’s sitting at his desk looking outside to his new environment, starting a story. I also sit at my desk and try to work, looking out of my window at a new landscape; I’ve know idea what it will bring me.

So for me the person in this print is Karl Ove Knausgård: thinking about his first novel. Surrounded by a new landscape.

collagraph print 2013