Westkapelle: Time heals all wounds
View of a sturdy village in the low sun
Painting height: 2.95 meter
Painting length: 17.90 meter
Period of Time: October 2019 – October 2020
Painting time: about 450 man hours
WHERE IS THIS?
The position of this painting is the KNRM Life-boat station. This dike was bombed by the allies on 3 October 1944, flooding Walcheren in order to push the German army to the dune side. Westkapelle suffered severely under the bombardment. In the Windmill “De Roos”, in the middle of the panorama, 44 people died,18 of them were children. There were 159 victims in total due to the bombings. The water on the right is a creek that was formed due to a yearlong of tidal changes. On the dike of Westkapelle there is a Sherman tank as a monument. At the bottom of the dike is the “Polderhuis” a museum in memory of the war.
THE RESULT
Westkapelle was on the list to be painted for a long time. A tip from a local to create the view from the KNRM Life-boat station corresponded with the inner feeling of the painter. November, with a low sun, orange rooftops and a grey sea surrounding him from a higher viewpoint: the painter could idealize that. A sturdy, but vulnerable village at the bottom of the dike, with the sea behind and the creek in the foreground Time heals all wounds and the present too.