Lân fan langstme ; Land of longing

Abe Gerlsma was a Frisian landscape painter and graphic artist. As his Dutch Wikipedia entry puts it, he was ‘fascinated all his life by the extraordinary light of the Frisian landscape. Friesland in contre jour, whether along the coast or in the country, was the central theme of his paintings and etchings’. Theunis Piersma wrote an introduction to the overview of Gerlsma's ouvre: "Abe Gerlsma comes from a generation in between my grandfather’s and my father’s, and I never met him. I grew up in another part of Friesland, in a family with other traditions, went into a different profession and have different hobbies. Yet in retrospect and at a distance, it was easy enough to look for, and find, the emotions he and I shared. Through his warmly coloured etchings and paintings, and the stories I’ve heard about him, I’ve come to feel close to Gerlsma."