It is a privilege to have been living in the small town of Ooij on the River Waal near the city of Nijmegen in The Netherlands for the past 35 years. Every day, I roam the dikes and narrow paths that cross the Ooij Polder, without ever getting used to its ever changing beauty.

The patch of hills that runs from Nijmegen into Germany is like the frame of a painting. Sometimes the décor is of a soft purple, then again it’s grey, green or blue, all depending on the weather or the season. And then there’s the River Waal with its wide horizons and cloudy skies!

Thirty years ago, when I took a course that focused on the different techniques to use with textiles, I once reproduced a beautiful sight out of fabric that I saw near my home. The result was a landscape that showed the frozen waters behind the Church of Hubertus in Ooij (click here to view this work).

It turned out to be the start of a long series of textile landscapes. Over the years, I created my very own genre of textile art. My body of work consists of many images of the polder in the Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter, but also of landscapes that I saw in Africa, the ocean, and much more.