Conjuring a swimming pond

You cannot truly understand the Dutch landscape without considering water.

In fact, the country would probably not still exist were it not for the specialised engineering approaches to water redistribution and control set in place; hydraulic systems, dikes, polders, dams and dunes are what literally keep the country afloat. Over half the country, and its population, live officially under sea level, in a country also known as the Lowlands. It is a man-formed landscape, a sculpture of engineering and requirement. Water has been an essential element to the countries’ historic wealth and power, and perhaps encouraged the seeking of naval and economic domination elsewhere.

During the pandemic, this adopted home of mine has become more of an island due to travel restrictions, than the islands of my birth just an inaccessible splash away. On a residency with the Vincent van Gogh Huis museum in Noord Brabant, a southern province of the Netherlands, I explored the Dutch landscape and its relationship with water anew. The waterways that exist in the area could be consid- ered the echo of a past era. The narrow yet very straight channel of the Turfvaart, for example, was for the transportation of peat, pulled on long barges to the city, often by women and, later, horses. Peat removal brought great wealth to the estates through the removal of up to 7 metres of the land’s surface, to provide fuel and speed the develop- ment and economies of the country. Although the waterways, polders and dikes are still essential to sustained living and farming practices, they have also distorted our ecosystems and are now having to be rethought with regard to new emerging realities of climate change and the increasing demands of population growth.

While plotting out the historic and potential swimming ponds of the de Moeren estate and its surrounding area, from the memory of recent discovery during my walks, and from research assisted by old maps, I was struck by recurring shapes and narratives. I found a mimicry across scale and function that spoke of a similar era in use and creation: a piece of broken ceramic found on an old lane behind the estate’s main house, and the floor plan of Atelier Richard Roland Holst (an artists’ studio designed in the Amsterdamse School style by the first Dutch female architect, Margaret Staal-Kropholler, in 1918), shared the shape of a local pond.

It was the appearance of a photograph of Henriette Roland Holst (poet and founding member of the Dutch Communist Party), in a swimming pond located somewhere ‘behind the rhododendron’ in the woods of the Buissche Heide nearby, that triggered an eagerness to plunge not only physically into the now dark stinky and stagnant waters, but also into these waters as symbols and new springs releas- ing historic narrative and ritual. Wild swimming and forest bathing have become particularly popular wellbeing activities in Western Europe, during this era of pandemic. Symbolically and spiritually water has long been a reference of cleansing and renewal. Whether recreationally or as an act of mediation and personal ritual, the waters have been inspirational for artists and poets across time and location. German artist Joseph Beuys could not resist the act, himself performing Aktion im Moor, in de Peel, a swamp in the Dutch province of Limburg (east of North Brabant) in 1971. Primordial acts of recon- necting with ourselves, greater forces and nature seem to be essential once more.

I picked up a Japanese ink brush and black ink pot as my tools for the plotting of the ponds and shapes recognised. Tools not until now utilised in my working practice but brought back from former projects in Asian locations, I was overdue. The black ink flows from the long brush along its own sensual pathway, at least to a novice painter. It gushes and weeps. Darkens and glistens when layered. Wets the page and crinkles. A new rippling and plunging of the dark waters’ surface, the submerging in the cold unknown depths of the swamps I encoun- tered is echoed. A shudder of fear and vulnerability from both acts occurs within the first moments, slowly followed by the presence of acceptance, calm and pure knowing. A rush of emotion and release. I continued with the ink painting, attempting the familiar circle of meditation practices. Little did I know that hidden in woods nearby was another old swimming pond, formed from a perfect ring.