Eric Cremers
During many travels all over the world, I got fascinated by the variety of things people build in different countries to live, work or pray in. Thus the subject of Habitats became my main subject. I will never represent inhabitants, that would be too illustrative. Not wanting to make ghost towns, I use laundry lines and parts of demolished computers for pots, pans and electrical equipment to suggest people are living there. When in 2012 my wife and I emigrated from Holland to the Caribbean Island of Bonaire, this island turned out to be heaven where it comes to finding natural materials. Especially pieces of driftwood that are constantly washed ashore offer great opportunities to create rocky landscapes on which colorful houses are built. I use branches for trees; palm tree leaves for roofs and other parts of palm trees like roots in many of my Habitats. Even after 16 years of making Habitats I am still struck by the endless range of possibilities this subject offers and how often what I find in nature is a precious source of inspiration. There have been periods when I wondered wetter or not, I was making ‘More of the same’, but it always turned out there were still aspects to investigate and experiment with that I did not pay attention to yet. Like most colleague artists I have periods with little or no inspiration, but by now I know it is just a matter of time before getting a new idea.
Dense forest, mixed media, 94 x 46 x 10 cm, 2025
