—
grafiekprijs 2023
toelichting
1
note [1]
The next titles—Charing Cross, King’s Cross, Sky, Zee & North (1998-2007)—
are not regular prints as produced by a laserwriter or deskjetprinter.
Indeed, you may call them ‘plots’, because the thin vector (or outline) is drawn
in ink by a machine. But, please be aware, the inside volume is painted by hand.
(I used extra fine black talens gouache mainly).
Conclusion: these images are thus true hybrids; created by entering code, drawn
by old-fashioned analog pen-up pen-down machine, and finally completed by hand.
1 Presented in the margin of www.swsaaltink.nl (Note: my digital archive and
website disappeared after Adobe quite suddenly discontinued the support of Muse
in 2020).
2
artist statement [2]
(RE-RI, vector drawing, 2015. Sequence GG, 2, 3 and 4. Canvas 1800 x 1800
pixels. Plotted in house on a Epson Stylus Pro 9900.)
Directly after graduating in Graphic Design (1977), Stephan Saaltink (1953) studied
Computer Sound Synthesis, Fortran and Logic at the Institute of Sonology in
Utrecht on one of the first huge PDP-15 computers in the Netherlands.
His Turtle (pen-up pen-down) Graphics are in fact recursive, self organizing
systems and thus somehow related to the inspiring work of John Henry Holland
(1929-2015) and others connected to the Santa Fe Institute (USA) in the early
1980s.
Saaltink started coding in Basic on a (MSX) pc generating black output with the
help of a Sony Hitbit A4 pen plotter around 1985. Recently he is most interested in
digital color spaces like RGB and HSB—especially layering and (semi)
transparency—while studying Processing.
RE-RI (2015) is a series of sequential duo’s and trio’s written in the language Logo.
Is n’t it surprising that such a mechanical device as a plotter feeded with just a few
lines of code is able to reproduce such a moody series of drawings?
2 Faculty Show (2017) at the University of Derby (UK).

3
posts [3 4]
21.6.2019—GRENEN is the latest series of blue-ish work, which by now is almost
completed, hence the preview. Its a massive and ‘rich’ body of hsb-studies, which
I initiated for over a year ago.
Thank you Yvonne for showing me around in the North of Denmark. Impressive!
Visit > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grenen if you want to read more about Grenen
and “the two turbulent colliding seas” (the Skagerrak on the left and Kattegat on
the right). I’ll post the final sequences this fall.
3]https://www.linkedin.com/posts/swsaaltink_2162019-grenen-is-the-latest-series
-of-activity-6547804811943792640-JHBL
18.12.2020—GRENEN. While referring to my earlier post out of 2019
(> https://lnkd.in/eGgtEFc), I am happy to present an adjusted, extended en
completed version of GRENEN just before the end of 2020.
The selection of the sequence on which I worked for over two years counts over
276 studies, which we narrowed down to fifty. The shortlist is archived on
SlideShare (> https://lnkd.in/eb_KzrN).
Please check the progress. I am featuring the first and the very last study below,
i.e. respectively 2019.05.01_GR015O_222 and 2020.11.23_GR920.C269.
Of course I am willing to share the code. Just ask! Meanwhile, please do let me
know your preferences. Enjoy, take care, HAPPY NEW YEAR.
4]https://www.linkedin.com/posts/swsaaltink_18122020grenen-while-referring-to-
my-activity-6745799574142668801-0vNR