About This Work

Not Iconic This graphite pencil drawing ‘Royal Estate De Horsten – 12-12-24’ represent not a very iconic image of the place. Instead, it’s just your average ditch ducks swim in. Well, there are plenty of them on the estate. I thought it would be good fun to include one of them in my De Horsten series. Recently I haven’t been adding new artworks to it. In fact, it’s been years now since I set food on these grounds. However, I just felt like drawing a new one from an old reference picture I took the last visit. Some Reasons There are a couple of reasons for doing so. I had a crazy week. My district, called ‘Mariahoeve’ became (inter)national news last Saturday. There was a big explosion at 6:15 AM kicking me almost out of bed. It took out a complete apartment block, killing 6 people. That was at a distance of 200 meters from where I live. Police investigation is ongoing but malicious intent is evident by the arrest of 4 men. Then my parents came to visit me that day and we had a lovely weekend nonetheless. We visited Museum Gouda with a lovely ‘Susanna – From the Middle Ages to Me Too’ as temporary exhibition. Next day we visited Museum Woerden where we saw Leo Gestel and Gustave de Smet. Once back in Nijmegen they faced the aftermath of a supermarket robbery. A police car crashed into the culprit’s one in front of their eyes. Youtube Last but not least, my ever struggles with Youtube got me a so-called ‘2nd warning’. It turned out the algorithm detected another nude it wasn’t quite happy with. Even though I put the actual movie to ‘adult’ Youtube thought it was ‘nude and sexual content’. This got me disappointed and angry at the same time. How is it possible that an algorithm gets to decide wether artistic nude is acceptable or not? The latter is allowed by Youtube by the way but the implementation of their policy feels extremely arbitrary. A 3rd warning wil be fatal, resulting in the deletion of one’s account.Therefor I decided to delete all videos of my nudes and semi-nudes altogether. I fear YT incrementally will become a video channel of certain themes. As to art, these would be darling interpretations of kitsch such as pets, horses, children, flowers and landscapes. Prude Tube This leaves me a bit puzzled since I love doing nudes but also landscapes. Therefor, I drew this ditch with swimming ducklings in a row. The most innocent theme imaginable. A drawing I surely will not post on Youtube any time soon now. The blockage will expire after two weeks but I leave Prude Tube be for the moment. Then again, I haven’t decided on having PT host my vids in the future yet. Rumble and Bitchute seem great yet smaller alternatives. They allow nudity and why not cute little ducklings as well, never to be seen on Prude Tube? One final thought for the reader (if any). Do you think it’s cute Tiktok allows influencers to entice children to use skin creams? Do you think children’s view on life will be improved by blocking the view of cubist nipples? Just some simple questions to ponder. Graphite pencil (Sakura mechanical pen, Pentel 4B) drawing on Winsor & Newton paper (14.8 x 21 x 0.1 cm) Artist: Corné Akkers