ABOUT THE ARTIST:
We are happy to present works by a fantastic versatile artist and printmaker from the Netherlands, Rolf Weijburg. With remarkable perception and skills as a graphic artist and printmaker, Weijburg brings to the viewer images that combine the geography, flora and fauna, architecture, and the people of the places he explores.

Rolf Weijburg was born in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, in 1952. While studying social geography and cartography at the University of Utrecht, Weijburg became interested in printmaking and graphic arts, and switched to the Academy of Fine Arts.

Following the tradition of many Dutch artists since the 17^th century who traveled abroad, Weiburg has traveled throughout Africa and the Caribbean, and the Middle-East. His travels are an integral part of his work, providing him with an endless flow of inspiration. Weijburg makes many sketches en route, takes photographs and makes audio-recordings of sounds encountered. These records on paper, film, and tape become the working material for the etchings when the artist returns to his studio in Utrecht, Holland, where he lives with his wife and 2 daughters.

His work would best be described as ‘travel stories’ or, as: "a documented inventory of various parts of the world -- a Dutch artist’s way to remember his journeys and share them with us." The late Franz Geierhaas, teacher and art historian, in his book The Creative Act spoke of the this passion for traveling as satisfying an artist’s need to explore diverse cultural, social, geographical and aesthetic components abroad. Additionally, in Rolf’s case his passion for traveling and gathering in the world as a yearning ‘almost Rousseau Ian’ for the simple life -- a return to nature.

The inspiration for the fantastic series of prints called "Local Beauties" comes from years ago when the artist received a postcard from Sri Lanka. The card was divided into four rectangles with ladies in local dress in each rectangle. One stood next to a house, one on a beach, one was standing in a forest and one had just stopped picking tea. It was an old-fashioned postcard with colours that might have been applied by hand. In the middle it read: Local Beauties.

For years, this card hung on the wall in the artist's house. Now the card has got lost. But its title has been preserved. The series, started in 1996, is still alive and new prints are made from time to time. The local of some of these small format etchings include "Shibam, Hadramawt" "Ilha do Ibo, Mozambique" and "Pay Bigouden, Finistere". New works are in progress.

FROM THE CARIBBEAN

Today Rolf Weijburg is working on another large series of etchings which will have the world's twenty smallest independent countries as a subject. This will again take Rolf on extensive traveling.

Among the works on display are images of Grenada, St. Lucia/The Pitons, St. Lucia/The Castries and Grenada.