Erna Van Wijk

ARTIST’S STATEMENT

Every artist dips his brush in his own soul and paints his
own nature into his pieces - Henry Ward Beecher
My creations, which I have decided to call “Episodes”, are generally known as doodles and are made subconsciously and compulsively during telephone conversations. I started doodling during my first years of employment in an office where a great deal of my work was done by telephone, demanding my absolute attention. Without realising it at that time, the mechanism which I subconsciously used in order to concentrate one hundred percent on the conversation, was to doodle. This very soon became a lasting habit. When the telephone rings my immediate reaction is to pick up some writing tool and as soon as the conversation starts my subconscious mind takes over and I begin to doodle. I do not see what I am drawing and I also do not recognise the work when I look at it later. Despite this, I do not consider my work as being done in a condition of total mindlessness, but as a “dipping of the paint brush” referred to in the quotation above.
A few years into my marriage, my architect husband became aware of the numerous pencil and pen drawings in my notebooks. He was a...