Going to downtown Willemstad across the pontoon bridge, somehow always felt ‘important’ to me as a child. Maybe it was the stateliness of the old Dutch architecture. Or maybe it was the riotous use of colour on the colonial buildings, which always impressed me so.
Phot by Dr. Richard Gielen
Back when my tricycle was my main mode of transport, I once backed off our raised garden path and fell on a ‘milon di seroe’ – the bulb cactus you see below.
Photo by Dr. Richard Gielen
Across Europe the weather is expected to be rather chilly this weekend, so I’m planning to bundle up and keep as warm as possible, while I dream of the warm sun and a bay with crystal clear water…
Photo by Dr. Richard Gielen
As a child, I always found a visit to the floating market at Waaigat to be a feast for the senses. The smells and sounds of an open market, where the stalls were tables set up on the quay in front of the boats of Venezuelan market folk who every day came sailing to Punda to sell their wares.
Unforgettable was the way Afro-Caribbean ladies would balance their shopping on their heads and proceed with their groceries with a sensuous swaying saunter. As impressive were the colours and variety of the fruit, vegetables and fish, but all the more so the vibrant prints of the clothes worn by the shoppers…
Photo: Hans W. Hannau
There is no doubt in my mind, that they influenced me greatly and triggered my love for exotic fabrics and their rich hues. To this day, I can hardly resist them!!
Hi! I have been meaning to write a blog for some time now, and finally here I am. My idea is to write about those things that inspire me in life – essential to my creative projects – and I hope to be able to make it interesting even for those who do not know me, i.e. the majority of you! Well, let’s start somewhere… here goes:
Photo by Hans W. Hannau
They say there is a place and a time for everything. So there also were for the moment and place I came to this life. The place was a tiny island in the Caribbean called Curaçao. The time: the economically buoyant Sixties.
The sun, the sea and the sedate pace of life in the Caribbean naturally had an effect on the way I perceive those things around me, and which, in time, became the things that inspire me to create…
