All rights reserved: @Mariejon de Jong-Buijs, 2024
Almost a decade ago, I sat on a tractor equipped with a small tank and painted—or more precisely, I drove the tractor forward and back repeatedly over a 165-foot (50-meter) length of canvas, marking the surface with paint that flowed from a series of holes in a pipe attached to the tank. The paint ran like fertilizer, herbicide, or water. I knew this kind of work—the careful control of the tractor, the constant looking forward and back, the patience and attentiveness that an otherwise simple operation requires. Since my teens, I had worked on farms doing a variety of tasks. Tractor driving was familiar to me, a mode of being outdoors, a deep memory known in my body and on my skin.
My process-based works are inspired by the tradition of Dutch landscape painting. Rather than representing the landscape, I aim to reconnect with it through memories—a time capsule of accumulated experiences and impressions. My paintings are large-scale, often characterized by saturated colors, geometric shapes, repetitive patterns, and the folding of the canvas. In their foldedness, I invite others to consider time and painting in a different way. A fold interrupts flatness, enclosing volume so that the painting’s surface is understood as pliable—something packable and unpackable as it exists in both stretched and unstretched formats.
The tractor’s movement back and forth across the length of the canvas—its tracking—was the first of many methods I used to mark the surface without a traditional brush. I am interested in the ways paint can be applied to create marks, inscriptions, and gestures through non-traditional means. Like back-sprayers and brooms, I utilize a full range of working tools both in and outside my studio.
Basel, Switzerland
2025