Inzending: Rik Hagt en Diana Story

Begin dit jaar ontvingen wij twee bijzondere inzendingen van Rik Hagt en Diana Story. Beiden zijn al langere tijd fan van Nick Drake en hebben een levendig kunstwerk gemaakt. In deze blogpost lees je hun verhaal en uitleg bij het werk. Heb je zelf ook een bijzondere kennismaking gehad met de muziek van Nick Drake? Of ben je geïnspireerd geraakt door de tentoonstelling Danielle Lemaire - You Know I Am Not There? Stedelijk Museum Breda verzamelt reacties van fans, schrijvers, kunstenaars en muzikanten op het werk van Drake. De inzendingen worden gepubliceerd op dit blog dat ook te zien is in de tentoonstelling van beeldend kunstenaar Danielle Lemaire.

Rik Hagt
Naar aanleiding van de Open Call op onze blog schreef Rik ons een bericht: ‘Ik ben zelf al levenslang fan van de muziek van Nick Drake. En ik maakte in 2009 dit portret van hem.’ Het portret is met kleurpotlood gemaakt en heeft een formaat van 21x51cm.

Diana Story
Diana maakte, geïnspireerd door de tekeningen van Danielle Lemaire, een zeer persoonlijke aquarel waarin ze de bijzondere band met haar vader verbeeldt. In onderstaande tekst lees je haar verhaal bij de tekening.

‘My name is Diana and I'm an Australian living in the Netherlands. During my time in art school in which I discovered Nick Drake's music. Being sixteen and immersed in a world of pure creation; I regularly pulled all-nighters, unbothered by the cold air rattling through the open window, dispersing the weighty turpentine in my room. Leonard Cohen's poetry flowed into my ears, while maroon velvet cloaked my ankles. I fancied myself a kind of gothic bohemian with ambitions to experience many textures of life. The great joy, the uncertainty, the romanticised and the real and the messy delineations between each that experience and recollection reveals. To what extent this was true or merely a fanciful revision of teenage angst, I remain uncertain. The other reality at the time, was learning how to live as an adult outside of the dysfunctional home I had grown up in.

As time passed, I entered the arts scene as a museum and theatre worker and formed a renewed and stronger understanding of my father. To the parent who had undeniable creative influence upon me, playing Waits, Cohen, Rodriguez, Sinatra and Fitzgerald in his workshop; I introduced 'Five Leaves Left' and perhaps, most fittingly, 'Man in A Shed'. The world in which my father lived was a volatile one, permeated by struggles with mental health and being caught between the flaring rages of my mother and the frustrations of my younger brother. Immersion in music, creative expression and a sense of poeticism helped him to bring meaning to the chaos of day-to-day life. While he battled cancer and to forge diplomacy in a domestic warzone, Drake's music found a place upon his pharmaceutical shelf. As our relationship grew closer once again; as it had been when I was a child, I gifted him albums. Each were artists I had discovered upon my journey into young adulthood, yet none touched him more greatly that Nick Drake. Struck by Drake's lyricism and contemplative tone, Five Leaves Left became a regular on his stereo circuit. Reflecting on this in the years since, I realise that Drake's music served both as a tool for healing for each of us as individuals and a medium for reconnection between father and daughter.

Seeing the call out from the Stedelijk Museum Breda and the concept and artworks of Danielle Lemaire inspired me to create this watercolour piece. Each element of the drawing is symbolically representative. On the far right is a sketch of my father as a child, standing on the handlebars of his bike – a favourite pastime. In the middle is the family cat, with whom he was especially close. To the left of the cat is a drawing of my father and I, when I was a child. On the far left is a sketch of the flowers the hospital staff placed with him when he passed away in 2018. The middle section takes the form of the paisley motif; a common print in the 1970s, when my father was young. This section of the painting represents my imagination of what he might be doing, should there be an afterlife. I pictured him painting a blonde woman, alongside an angelic version of the family dog (of whom he was very fond). In this section, I included a sacred heart and a St Brigid's cross, each of which represent his Irish-Dutch Catholic cultural upbringing. The lower section of the painting features a lyric by Nick Drake, 'so they stood and thought and wondered why... for this was the time of no reply.' This line, to me, not only captures mysterious of nature of death and separation but the timeless meditative quality of Nick Drake.’