HOLLAND SERIES
Although born in Canada, Sjaarda has Frisian grandparents. During her first visit to Friesland she was overcome by a feeling of recognition: the horizontal, flat land with here and there a vertical element like a tower or tree; that was also the landscape of her own youth. She asked herself if her grandparents and other Dutch immigrants had had a similar experience of the landscape on their arrival in Canada. In a series of Frisian and Canadian landscapes Sjaarda gives shape to feelings of recognition and nostalgia. Her pake and beppe (grandfather and grandmother) form the bridge between the two geographic and emotional worlds.
