Harry van der Woud

“I’m a Dutch artist living in Amsterdam, originating from Friesland, and remember very well the book I read in my youth called the Friese Kurassier (The Frisian cavalryman). The story of the son of a Frisian worker who had to serve in the army of Napoleon and had never been out of Friesland. There was a story in the local paper of the heartbreaking letters that Frisian boys wrote back home. They died on their way to Russia, also in Germany, 70 percent never seeing home again.

Contemplating further on the theme I thought the idea that nowadays people leave home trying to find a living elsewhere crossing borders is in fact the basic history of man, in earlier times lacking the borders we have nowadays, people where nomads on the road searching for fertile grounds. Man’s basic status quo is looking beyond the horizon, longing for home, ‘zu hause will ich sein aber vielleicht bin ich bereits da’ (‘I want to be home, but maybe I already am’).

I’m planning on making a large scale figure with found materials, a soldier wearing a head covering from Napoleonic times which at the same time is a birdhouse in which I hope birds will actually nest & settle, as in the song Wherever I Lay My Hat (That’s My Home).”

Harry van der Woud was born in Leeuwarden, Friesland, The Netherlands. He lives and works in Amsterdam.
Education: Academy Minerva, Groningen.

http://www.harryvanderwoud.nl