Anneke van Santen: sail sets art in motion

Landscapes,Collages, Matter-paintings and Birds

Landscapes: The fascination of movement and strukture.

The latest developments are the use of natural pigments, o. a. volcano ash, iron oxide and lava rock, and volcanic sand found in Iceland, and the Red Earth pigments in Africa.

COLLAGES: the power of sand and canvas.

The Dutch artist Anneke van Santen has a thing with sea, wind and birds. Titles such as Coastline, Twirre (a Frisian word meaning a light, twirly wind) and Plunge make that immediately clear. The more remarkable when you realize that this artist lives among the meadows of the Frisian village of Katlijk just out of the woods of Oranjewoud.

But seeing her use of materials clarifies a lot. Pieces of canvas with the eyelets still there and pieces of cable are direct pointers to sailboats and life on sea. Van Santen, born in Friesland, was raised in the Dutch province of Zeeland. ’That’s almost inevitable’ many a person will think when seeing her abstracted compositions in which the shades of grey of cloudy skies and the ochres of shoals dominate. The pieces of sail come from the ships that are indissolubly tied to the sea.

The signs and numbers found in her work come from sail numbers in mainsails and spinnakers. The references cannot be more concrete. In her work everything mainly hinges on ordering, recreation and on the art of composing. The balanced composition is given more attention than the pursuit of recognisability of the sources.


Rough lines are applied in paint, sand and corrugated cardboard. The interplay of lines and the relations between forms contribute to the balance Anneke seeks and finds. With the aid of found materials an authentic world is conjured up. Recycling materials that used to have a different function makes for art in which the references to the original function have merged into a new unity.





The dynamics of the landscape are visible in many works, such as birds in flight, the whirling of the wind and the currents of the water. Motion which is never boring and leads to new discoveries in every light.