Wijnand Zijlmans

Wijnand Zijlmans has a passion for natural stone. Stone goes back to very distant past and has already made a long journey before the sculpture gives it new dimensions. Wijnand Zijlmans makes a stone transparent and meditative. At the same time he shows it in all its compactness and poetry, reaching the core of the material.
He shows us the stone from within and without. The stone can be hard or soft, dark of light, roughly cross-cut or polished to a gloss, frayed or flowing, violently moving or intensely still.
The skin mirrors and absorbs, takes in and lets go again. Like a poet who can catch essences in just a few words, he sums it all up in a piece of stone. The sculptures are a great presence to those susceptible to it. They are beacons of calm in our hectic life, still moments enabling us to come to ourselves for a short while. They lead to reflection and a deepening of the self. This makes them engaged sculptures, involved in the human condition. Something happens in the sculpture and between sculpture and beholder.

Wijnand Zijlmans composes the stones. The shape comes into being in his mind and while he is sculpting the image crystallizes. He usually selects rock varieties for their contrasting hardness, colour and texture.