Friday, September 19, 2014

Dutch Quixote

Wooden shoes, tulips, cheese and...windmills! That's Holland. My country.

We don't walk in wooden shoes any more. Even the Dutch feet are covered with Crogs, Birkenstock and Uggs nowadays. Tulips? It appears to be a polluting industry which too, ofcourse, can be done cheaper abroad. Leaving us only cheese and our famous windmills. That is...

The beautiful mills, once built to create new land, are limited to merely 1,000 pieces today. And we are still counting down. The craftsmen necessary to preserve the old mills are hard to find. Oh yeah, we are building new mills. But these cannot be compared with the old stuff in any way. Long tall poles of metal rising up at the horizon, or, if you're one of the unlucky non flying Dutchmen, in your backyard. Fortunately the 'older' types of the "windmill 2.0" are replaced by more productive mills so we have less environmental damage. Nevertheless the old mills have lost this battle. Say: "cheese!"

Image above, detail of the original painting below (80x80cm, acrylic and sand on canvas): 

No comments: