Page 13 - Enamel & More

Maria van Elk, Crossings

Maria van Elk draws, in the works printed on the two previous pages, two
intersecting lanes with oil pastel on paper or cardboard. There are several
crossings:
-one lane overlaps the other,
-the underlying lane is drawn through the parent lane causing, by means
of the drawing process, a second crossing on the intersection,
-one colour dominates visually the other colour although that colour does
lay indeed under the other one. This is because lighter colours easily
take on part of darker colours while the darker colours remain practically
unaffected.

The word ‘crossings’ arouses also other, philosophical, associations that
could be interpreted positively or negatively. For instance, in the sentence
that one track dominates another at the crossing, or that at the crossing
both adopt something from one another. In addition, they evoke a number
of meanings in the context of the general everyday speech such as:
‘cancelling a bill, to undo something while it still remains, to mark a cross
when one cannot write’ and so forth. In short, this simple condensed
act turned out to involve many implications, distortions of reality and
associations. About this extremely complicated combination of the most
simple, clear decisions and acts handles this work. All of this in relation to
living through reality which is seemingly uninteresting, trivial or extremely
self-evident.

Enno Develing

Text at Crossings (Doorkruisingen, 1983)
Museumjournaal (Museum News), no. 28/4, 1983
Artist Pages, p. 238-239

11