knits
Here you can see some scarfs and a sweater knitted by me. A lot of these colours are created by me, by using two different woollen threads together. The sweater is made of all sorts of woollen patches, knitted by me over the years, without knowing on beforehand how these would fit in. The design was made afterwards, when the knitting was done.
Margreeth at the age of one
The main starting-point of the works regarding this
Website, is colour.
But the most important starting-point of these works
is of course this little girl in the pen, who I am, and
who climbed with her feet in the net, before she was
one year old, and managed to tumble herself out of
the pen by turning somersault ( I hope this is a good
translation, at least she came down on the ground,
outside the pen).
When I look at her I feel love for her and memories
from my early years of childhood cross my mind.
At that time, being only some years old, colour already
was something very important to me. Then I already
practised the intensive looking at colours and felt their
influence on my inner world.
Colours were associated with food for example. A
certain green in combination with a certain orange I
took with aversion, I couldn't understand how others
were able to string beads of these colours together.
They reminded me of carrots and peas and when you
had to eat these together I thought this was very nasty.
Now I like that food and these colours together.
So colours are directly connected with colour-associations
and colour-memories. For everyone those can be
different and during your life they can change. Because
you discover continually new areas in yourself and in
your life, and with that new colourfields.
I was about ten, eleven, twelve years old when I knitted coloured woolen areas together. At that time my interest was the choosing of the colours, putting the woollen balls in a different order again and again. For me, this was great and all-embracing. The eventually destiny of the knitted piece was a secondary concern.Then I knew, I want to do something like this later, but it was only a vague dream.
That I could really always do this after my studytime at the Academy of Arts
was more beautiful than I could have imagined and something for which I am grateful.
I myself think my paintings and drawings are very beautiful.
Maybe I like them better than anyone else can ever do.
Strictly what they do to me, how they touch me when I
look at them. Whether my work will be of any importance
in art-historical way, I can not really tell, for I am too much
emotionally involved in the work. But my hope is that this
will be the case indeed.
For all the time, I want to step out the circle of the known,
the familiar colourcombinations, those that go without
saying, and let myself fall, full of enthusiasm into a new
unknown colourworld. For inside myself, this little girl
is still tumbling.
Margreeth Oosterhof august 2004