Gert van Dijk: “Lines in Leiden”

The program involves manual work. Van Dijk works with a fixed line thickness and fairly precise lines, such as in Tintin comics and the work of Joost Swarte, but the lines are never straight as a ruler: “I tried that one day but it was dead on.” A consequence of that fixed line thickness is that you cannot draw some things because there would be so many lines that you would end up with a black area. "That's why bicycle wheels on my plates don't have spokes. It's not even noticeable." 

As long as there are only lines on the plate, you can count the work under the Klare Lijn, a name coined by Joost Swarte in 1977. But Van Dijk adds color in a way that does not entirely fall under that style: the colors flow and reflect shadows and spots of sunlight. “With that line and color combination, the result looks more like some Japanese woodcuts or Art Nouveau works. But honestly, I don't really care about the name of the style. A friend called it 'cold lines and warm colours'. That's quite right.” Usually the cityscapes are quite empty, which is true for early morning walks. Often there is only one person visible, who adds a story to the cityscape. That turns out to be Van Dijk's wife, who is enjoying the city in a red coat.