Woordelaas – The Human and the Landscape
The work of Woordelaas moves between two poles: the human expression and the silent landscape. His portraits reveal the storm within the face, while his landscapes capture the silence that follows.
In his portraits, paint becomes a mirror of the soul — thick, restless, and charged with emotion. In his landscapes, that same paint settles into calm, yet beneath the surface, the same human tension lingers. The sky, the wind, the water — all seem to echo that inner vibration, as if nature itself listens to the stirrings of mankind.
Woordelaas blends realism with expressionism, merging observation and emotion into a single visual language. His villages, mills, and rivers breathe familiarity, yet they are never mere depictions of place: they are inner landscapes, spaces where silence, memory, and transience speak to each other.
He paints the world not as it is, but as it feels after a long pause — the breath of time still hanging in the air, a light with no clear origin, and a solitary figure by the shore, watching and wordless.
Whether in a face or a horizon, Woordelaas seeks the same elusive moment when life reveals itself — a trembling in the sky, a gaze that lingers too long, a brushstroke that says too much.
Woordelaas is not a chronicler of what he sees, but of what he experiences — the enduring astonishment that everything still exists.
