Interventions: I Intervene In Paintings, Just As We Have Intervened In Our Landscape As A Society

I am Rene Jacobs, I have my own gallery in the center of Delft, Holland and I paint in my shop window. People can watch over my shoulder while I’m working. I live in Rotterdam and every day I take my bike to work. Only ten years ago there was a beautiful landscape between these two towns: windmills, green fields, cows, trees, canals. The way you probably image Holland should look like. But this scenery is being threatened severely and the landscape is slowly but certainly disappearing. Highways, business areas, expanding airports, trains, windmills, and power pylons are destroying our beloved Dutch landscape.

Every day there is a little less landscape and a little more urban jungle. At first I was angry and frustrated by this process but I realized there was not much we could do to change it and even worse: we are all in it. We all profit from the benefits and we are all sharing guilt. It has inspired me to make these artworks. I have bought old existing paintings with typical Dutch sceneries. Some paintings were over a hundred years old. I have added the monstrosities of our modern times. It makes the images both recognizable and painful but the humoristic edge makes our them bearable.

I have named these paintings interventions because I intervene in these paintings, just as we have intervened in our landscape as a society.

More info: galeriedekunstkop.nl