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- Waterworks (fountains)
- Light: electric / sun energy / candle
- Part of a facade
- Gardens, inner gardens, roof gardens
- Monument of memory

1974

Opening speech by Hans Paalman, ex-director of the City Museum, Schiedam, in September 1995.

The French painter George Braque once said: 'Writing is something other than describing, painting something other than representation', and that description can be applied to the work of Glenn Priester. He attempts to visualize that which appears as phenomena in the nature surrounding us. The theme of this exhibition 'Weather Gods' is clouds - a new theme in Glenn's work.

Since his youth - even as early as his years in the tropics - it was water which attracted and inspired him to the conception of his landscapes. He now has another natural apparition, namely clouds. The atmosphere in his earlier landscapes was dominated by the presence of water.
In his landscape representations, he attempts to visually show contrast in nature. The contrasts between hard rock formations and apparent soft water, the contrast of the sun (according to Hugo Claus: 'that endless face that burns') and the shadow of mist. He paints, as it were, the contrasts of nature; contrasts which became atmospheric images of landscape experience.
The Hague's painter/poet Willem Hussen created a painting with words, inspired by water and air, in an 'evocative manner':

' put the blue
of the sea
against the
blue of the
sky, paint
in the white
of the sail
and the
wind blows'.

At this exposition the theme is clouds. Through courses at the Higher Navigation School in Rotterdam, Glenn was able to involve himself with another natural form of water, namely clouds. If his earlier landscape impressions were mostly horizontal, often with a typically Dutch horizon - now his recent work, which he calls 'sky-landscapes', is vertically biased Also the use of various materials: as well as linen and wood, also metals which have an alienating affect, nevertheless it strengthens the visual form.
A first confrontation with the new work gives the observer the impression that a certain form of constructivism is recognisible, it is that the vertical and sometimes horizontal lines do not seem to be fixed straight lines, to the naked eye, but are vibrating coloured panels.

All the same, a quote from two Russian sculptors in 1920, Antoine Pevsner and his brother Naum Gabo (statue Bijenkorf Rotterdam) can be applied to Glenn's recent work. In a manifesto published in 1920, they declared that art was 'founded on the real laws of life'. They declare that:
'With the plummet in our hands, our eyes exact as a ruler, in a mind as pecise as a compass .... we construct our work, just as the universe constructs itself, as an engineer his bridges, a mathematician his formulas for the orbits of planets.'

The skylandscapes of Glenn Priester are pictorial observations of cloud movements; of clouds: 'visible, obvious to the naked eye or not, formed masses of floating tiny droplets of water or ice crystals in the atmosphere, which can change to rain, snow or hail' according to Van Dale.

Glenn Priester tries to capture this natural process within the context of his paintings. He experiments, as it were, with the aquired knowledge of meteorology and landscape painting. The English landscape painter John Constable has formulated the following:
'Painting is a science and should be seen as a progression of the research in to the laws of nature. Why is landscape painting not seen as a part of natural philosophy and the painting as its experiments?'

This question will now be answered in the 'skylandscapes' of Glenn Priester.
An exhibition which shows how inspiring the space, which divides heaven and earth, is. Glenn Priester interprets signals from this space in a totally personal way.
It was a prvilege to have the oppportunity to introduce this work to you.