Time and again, artist Elsbeth Cochius tackles the tangle of nature

It was a dream image, a kind of fata morgana, of trees in a swamp. The water flowed around the trunks into the depths, where the trees continued in broken reflections and a suspicion of roots. Around them it flowed as water does, unpredictable, pure movement. At the top the trunks branched out. There too there was movement and overlap everywhere. Pure, linear black and white. Abstract, and yet not.

Outside the banks is the name of the work, a linocut by Elsbeth Cochius (1951). The size is large, 60x160 centimeters. A loner among other works, paintings, drawings that I encountered last summer in Museum MoRE in Gorssel, at an exhibition about water in art.

Everyone knows the surprise of a work of art that grabs you and doesn't let go. That sensation is even stronger when it involves an encounter with a stranger. I had never heard of the maker, Elsbeth Cochius. Further research showed that she has been making such linocuts all her life. Often very large, on sheets for which she has installed a special hoist system in her studio, in order to carefully peel them off the linoleum base. It is always, as she herself says, about 'structures'. Shapes, lines that occur in nature. Grasses, roots, branches, fences; the complexity is infinite. That infinity fascinates her. Chaos and order, constant change. Pure form.

Making art like this takes a certain courage and dedication

Own idiom

Making art like this requires a certain courage and dedication. It doesn't make you rich or famous. What you see is what you get. Shadow, depth, complexity. Cochius' linocut reminded me of the work of the anarchist-socialist Chris Lebeau, who also made those large linocuts a hundred years earlier. In his case, it was dune landscapes that were his special love. To draw his ever-changing variations of dunes with grass, he would go into the dunes for weeks with a caravan or tent, to capture the pure, graphic beauty of the landscape.

In this approach, of translating reality into a very own idiom, lies a core that works of art can be undeniably good at. It is a quality that is independent of everything. Independent of your ability to reason, to analyze, to attribute. Which does make you, on the train or on your bike home, perceive the world a little differently.

Such intensity is not always achievable. Just like Lebeau, not all of Elsbeth Cochius' work achieves the enchantment of that one thing, with those trees and that water. You do see in her oeuvre how she tackles her theme, the 'tangle' of nature, time and again, like a mountain that has to be conquered, and then just hope that you reach the top. She describes that herself: how it sometimes works out better than others, and how the work occasionally exceeds your own expectations.