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Featured Marŝarto24 New 16 Jan, 2025

The wind walks with you around the island

View, graphite pencil on slight bend handmade paper on stones, 70x10cm, 2024

Liesje van den Berk draws not only what she sees but also what she hears or feels, drawing how the senses absorb the environment. And this is what she did for her piece Walk in Fleinvaer, documenting her experience on the island with the same name in Norway.

Liesje’s work is one of the shortlisted pieces for the 2024 Marŝarto Awards. Below, she talks about her work.

Walk on Fleinvaer’ is an installation of drawings as a walk on an island. The installation is shown during the exhibition ‘Artists who walk’ in Kunstliefde, Utrecht (NL) and is inspired by my walks on Fleinvaer. In Augustus 2024 I stayed on the Island Fleinvaer in Norway at the Arctic Hideaway, an artist in residence, for 10 days to explore the island by walking and drawing. During my stay I explored the question: What is the relationship between my body and the environment and walking?

“Traces of walking”, Graphite pencil on paper, 80×150 cm, 2019

Allmansrätten

Fleinvaer is a small island in Norway with no cars, no shops, just approximate 30 inhabitants, a lot of stones and an artist in residence, the Arctic Hideaway. As there are no official roads on the island walking in Fleinvaer means walking over private land. In the Netherlands, where I’m from, we aren’t allowed to cross private land. Properties are surrounded with fences, hedges and walls. The walking roads are marked with posts and signs. So the first day I struggled to walk around the island, blocked by my own cultural background. So I was happy to read about Allmansrätten, ‘Everyman’s right’, in the book The Old Ways by Robert MacFarlane on my first evening.

“Footpaths are mundane in the best sense of that word: ‘worldly’, open to all. As rights of way determined and sustained by use, they constitute a labyrinth of liberty, a slender network of common land that still threads through our aggressively privatized world of barbed wire and gates, CCTV cameras and ‘No Trespassing’ signs. It is one of significant difference between land use in Britain and in America that this labyrinth should exist. Americans have long envied the British system of footpaths and the freedoms it offers, as I in turn envy the Scandinavian customary right of Allmansrätten. This convention, born of region that did not pass through centuries of feudalism, and therefore has no inherited deference to landowning class, allows a citizen to walk anywhere on uncultivated land provided that he or she cause no harm; to light fires; to sleep anywhere beyond the curtilage of a dwelling; to gather flowers, nuts and berries; and to swim in any watercourse (rights to which the newly enlightened access laws of Scotland increasingly approximate).

Paths are the habits of a landscape. They are acts of consensual making. It’s hard to create a footpath on your own1.

Invisible ways, watercolor and graphite on paper, 32x24cm, 2024

This text about Allmansrätten gave me freedom to roam around the island and collect material. During my walks I regularly came to dead end, stuck in higher vegetation. I wondered if the lines in the landscape are existing old paths or just some a trail of the wind. This quest for ways resulted in the drawings Invisible ways and A carved path.

A carved path, graphite (pencil and powder) on paper, 113 x ± 300 cm, 2024

Drawalks

To use the experience of walking in my art practice, I have developed a drawing method ‘Drawalks’ to observe and record the environment through sensory experiences and (walking) drawing. The focus is often on senses other than sight – such as smell, sound and touch – to gain new perceptions of the environment.

Related:  The tactile experience of creative walking

Walking is getting to know the environment through the senses. I draw not only what I see but also what I hear or feel, drawing how the senses absorb something. The flapping of the wind, the crackling, tapping and rolling stones under my feet, the rustling of the plants against my legs or the soggy marshiness of the path, always require different lines on the paper, from thin, sharp, staccato lines to thick strokes. I draw and write these experiences directly on paper during the walk.

In 2014 I started my drawing method Drawalks at MAE artists’ retreats in Sesimbra (PT). In Sesimbra I drew the sea, but I couldn’t record the constant movement of the sea in my drawing. So I started to draw the sea while walking along the shoreline capturing the constant abstract change of the landscape. In these drawings the movements and tides of the sea were visible and tangible. Through this method I notice the significance of a landscape and its interrelationship. The drawalks in Fleinvaer gave me starting points to further explore the area and the walk, such as the view on the hilltop, the ground beneath my feet and wind around my body.

Soaking wet, graphite pencil on paper, 100x65cm, 2024 / Instagram Video

It embraces everything

The wind is always present in Fleinvaer, where there is almost no protection from the wind, just a few houses and trees. The wind walks with you around the island, from tailwind to headwind. It embraces everything. Sometimes it feels like a cloth, the other time like a metal plate or a breeze.
I have been blown off the hill. Suddenly the rain hit my face. In one minute you are soaking wet and the next moment its is dry again. I record these personal impressions of the wind during the walks in Drawalks, audiorecordings of physical experiences and notes. At home in my studio I translated these personal sensory notations into movements with my graphite pencil on paper.

Stones under my feet

Fleinvaer is an island of stones. Lines of quartz run through the landscape. Stones are constantly rolling and creaking under the feet. During my walks I picked up some of the typical stones of the island. Collecting these stones enable me to represent the ground beneath my feet, the soil of the island. I could touch and turn around these stones and through this embodied experience draw them with attentive precision as treasure and memory of my walk.

Beside gathering material I also recorded some of my walks on video. I filmed these walks from my hips, my core. So I was able to go back to my memory of the walking: to the surfaces under my feet and the experience of my body. The sounds of the surfaces in these videos change from crackling, rolling, slushy, sticky, sliding, hard, rustling to murmurous and back. I used these videos and sounds in my studio for translating my experience of the walks in larger drawings. For example I made a slow turn on my axis at the top of the top of the hill of Fleinvaer, to capture the wide view of the archipelago and the mountains in the far distances. In my studio I made a panaroma of this view of the whole archipelago spread across a few drawings, View. I have chosen to draw this on handmade panoramic paper with a slight bend. Drawing only the land, the water and the sky remained unmarked.

Related:  "Walking Home" writing competition winners announced

Far away and up close

All these drawings, collected material of my walks on Fleinvaer, came together in my installation Walk on Fleinvaer in Kunstliefde at the exhibition Artists who walk. Walking is taking everything in and constantly changing perspective. Your eyes dance from detail on the ground to the sky and mountains in the distance. I have brought these different physical experiences back into the exhibition.

As the sensory and physical experience is important for me in a walk I also used this in my installation. All the drawings where placed around a staircase, that you had to ascend or descend.
Constant shifting from near to far away, from sketch to detailed drawing, from realistic impressions to embodied expressions. Some of the drawings you could best see from a distance, others up close. Some showed the distance others the close ups. At the top floor I placed the drawings View on rocks on the ground. So the audience was forced to bend down as if they were picking up a stone. Through exhibiting my work as a walk, the visitors got a glimpse of walking on the island and in an exhibition with awareness of your own body and the surface you walk on.

Drawing and walking is a way to experience the richness of your environment and make contact with each other.

Overview exhibition
  1. Robert Macfarlane. The old ways, a journey on foot (London: Penguin Book, 2013), p. 16, 17 ↩︎

APA style reference

van den Berk, L. (2025). The wind walks with you around the island. walk · listen · create. https://walklistencreate.org/2025/01/16/the-wind-walks-with-you-around-the-island/

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Norway
Fleinvaer
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overzicht2.jpg
Walking piece

Walk on Fleinvaer

An installation of drawings 5 graphite pencil on curved handmade paper on the rock on the floor, 70x10cm 3 large graphite drawing, 113 x ± 300cm, 80 x150cm and 100x65cm 7 color drawings, 8x10,5cm, 6 graphite drawings, 21x14,8cm 2 drawings 32x24cm

Copyright: Liesje van den Berk
Copyright: Liesje van den Berk
Copyright: Liesje van den Berk
Copyright: Liesje van den Berk
Copyright: Liesje van den Berk
Copyright: Liesje van den Berk
Copyright: Liesje van den Berk
Copyright: Liesje van den Berk
Copyright: Liesje van den Berk
Copyright: Liesje van den Berk

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caddy

One who carries a heavy bag for another who is intent on spoiling a walk.

Added by Andrew Stuck
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