Bart Lodewijks – Library

Watou Arts Festival, Belgium, 2026

Geert comes driving up on a telehandler, an agricultural vehicle with a telescopic boom. Seated next to him in the cab is Raymond, crammed against the window. The tractor tyre dangles from a wide cotton loop. Marleen, Raymond and Geert watch me draw the first lines on it. The chalk adheres nicely to the rubber surface. Goodyear. A good brand. ‘Is the tyre going to be in the festival?’ Geert asks. ‘No, it’s going back to where it came from: to you, on top of the silage.’

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The Spomenik Drawings

Bosnia, 2024

In 1997 I go on a cycling trip to Sarajevo. The Peace Agreement has just been concluded but the war rages on in the minds of the people. Over the next couple of years I work on a documentary about how my contemporaries there are picking up the pieces of their lives. Along the way, I lose a little piece of myself. It’s nothing compared to what they have endured, but it connects me to their land. In 2024 I accompany Jan Kempenaers on his trip to Bosnia to photograph Spomeniks, futuristic monuments erected to commemorate the victory of the Partisans over the Fascists. I want to draw on them, but it feels grotesque and inappropriate. They were not built for me but to heal the country’s wounds.

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New Neighbours

Haren Prison, Brussels, 2024

Jean-Pierre, Fred and Laurence are concerned about the pending arrival of twelve hundred new neighbours behind the high walls at the end of their street, neighbours they will never get a chance to meet. When the first group of inmates moves into the new prison building, I go inside as well to draw among them. Nobody comes near the drawings. A burly bloke with a buzzcut who has been locked up half a lifetime stands guard over them. At one point, I draw on his cell wall, which is strictly forbidden. For that one line, I get turned out onto the street, back with Jean-Pierre, Fred and Laurence.

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Côte Flamande Drawings

Emergent Galerie, De Panne, Belgium, 2023

The living room has paintings by Raveel, Delvaux and Tuymans hanging in it; quite a difference from the working-class neighbourhoods I generally draw in. The staring man in the Tuymans painting gives me the willies. I start a conversation with him, as if the house is a street and he one of the residents. Turns out to be an interesting guy.

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Ruisbroek Church Drawings

First triennial of the Zenne Valley, Ruisbroek, Belgium, 2023

Working from a boom lift, I draw on the church in Ruisbroek. Standing up there, I feel elevated above God and sundry. But I’m quickly brought up short when the wheels get stuck in the wet grass. The regulars of the local pub across from the church and the publicans themselves spring into action and come to my aid. The brothers Aziz and Said, Wong, a gambler and a man with tattoos on his neck are my guardian angels.

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Ruivenstraat Drawing

Murals Inc., Rotterdam, 2023

To the residents of Ruivenstraat and the surrounding streets, passersby and neighbourhood children:

It’s finally time for the chalk drawing I have conceived to graduate from the sketchbook to the real world. But it will take some doing. Meanwhile, the shiny, turquoise motorized dinosaur I need in order to draw on the thirteen-metre-high apartment building refuses to cooperate. A specialist is sent to help. I make myself comfortable while I wait by grabbing a chair out of one of the front gardens and setting it next to the blue-green monster, as if I am its owner.

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Merelbeke Drawings. A Small History in Large Print

Merelbeke Nursing Home, Belgium, 2021

In early February 2020 I do chalk drawings in the dementia wing of the nursing home in Merelbeke. The next month the pandemic breaks out and the care facility is shut off from the outside world. I continue the drawing in that outside world, in the places where the nursing home residents once lived. I promise one of them, a friendly elderly gentleman named Maurice, who is an avid reader but now suffers from poor vision, that my story will be published as a large print book, so that he won’t be annoyed by the tiny letters.

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On the Road to Watou

Watou Arts Festival, Belgium, 2021

In the winter leading up to the Watou Arts Festival photographer Jan Kempenaers and I explore the fields and country roads around the village. On the Dodemanstraat Jan finds a dilapidated farm to take pictures of, while I draw chalk lines on a stable door. A man and woman suddenly appear in the doorway. ‘We didn’t know where those scraping sounds were coming from,’ says the man. They are Raymond and Marleen, a brother and sister who have lived for seventy years in what was once a splendid farmstead. Now, they wait for summer to arrive, seated at the kitchen table next to the gas heater listening to the radio under cool fluorescent light.

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Molenbeek Drawings

Bambino Day-Care Centre, Brussels, 2021

Green, orange and red chalk shapes add a spark of life to the walls at Bambino, a new children’s day-care centre in Molenbeek. The building is the crowning achievement for Rita van Wijnendeale, manager since 1972. ‘The chalk shapes are the last thing that needs to happen,’ she says. ‘Then I can retire. After forty-eight years, my work will finally be done.’

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Noordereiland Drawings

Murals Inc., Rotterdam, 2020–2021

I steady my feet on the bottom rung of the ladder, which is slippery with algae. A brackish odour creeps into my nose, while lukewarm river water from the Maas splashes onto my shoes. I lower a bucket slowly into the river; it’s heavy work. The property owners association wants the drawings removed. I walk back and forth to the Maas hundreds of times gathering water. ‘The drawing is crying,’ says Leendert. He lives in the apartment complex and is a champion on behalf of my work. I visit him in his apartment on the tenth floor and an invitation to continue drawing is extended. When he is done speaking, the silence in the room is palpable. A letter follows, and shortly after that he withdraws. That is how he refers to dying: as a withdrawal. Leendert has lived with chronic pain. He ultimately succumbs, but not before we can say goodbye.

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Menen Slide Show

S.M.A.K., Menen, Belgium, August 2020

At the height of summer I draw on trees, bushes and walls in the quiet garden in Menen. The rain washes my lines slowly away, but Jan Kempenaers captures them in square black-and-white photos, along with views of the surroundings. In the medieval network of corridors under the garden, we project 35mm slides of the project photos and a selection of texts from twenty years’ work.

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Meibloemstraat Drawings

De Koer, Ghent, 2020

I am brought in as a ‘poetic adviser’ for the renovation of De Koer, a cultural arts centre on the outskirts of Ghent. Under the motto ‘If you remodel De Koer, you remodel the entire neighbourhood’, I do chalk drawings in the streets, gardens and parks of the surrounding area. Residents ask me what they mean and we engage in conversation, all without moving a single brick.

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Kerselare Drawings and Photographs. In memoriam Juliaan Lampens (1926-2019)

Kerselare, Belgium, 2019–2020

The Flemish Brutalist architect Juliaan Lampens originally sketched the design for the Chapel of Our Lady of Kerselare (built from 1963 to 1966) in chalk on a blackboard wall in his studio. Half a century later, I repeat the operation on the chapel itself. The chalk lines constitute a reimagining, a search for the original design. They are documented by the photographer Jan Kempenaers, along with the local environment as it changes through the seasons.

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Kerselare Drawings and Photographs (Part 1)

Bochum Drawings

Bobiënnale, Bochum, Germany, 2019

‘Dear Christian: Thank you for inviting me to participate in the Bochum Biennial. Producing a daily report will be something new for me, but I like having to think on my feet. I propose that I start where I ended in 2016: on the concrete wall of the railway viaduct across from Neuland on the Rottstrasse. From there, I will draw myself into the city.’

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Gaasbeek Drawings

Gaasbeek Castle, Belgium, 2019

‘Hi Roger: The animals and people from Bruegel’s paintings are alive and well. An owl flutters out of the fireplace into the living room, while two sphinxes stand guard. The man of the manor is a horseman of parchment, proclaiming like the Oracle of Delphi. I thought it’d be nice to put out an e-book describing this world, maybe two thousand words, in both Dutch and English, as a follow-up to Calcutta Drawings. What do you think?’ ‘Sure. Send the text and images on through. You could set out an iPad at the exhibition or print a large-format version to hang on the wall. In any event, I can definitely get it on the site by 7 April.’

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Calcutta Drawings

Calcutta Art Research Foundation, Calcutta, 2018

‘They are all gangsters,’ says Akram, who is better dressed than the other people under the bridge. ‘The fat one there is a kidnapper. And that one was a soldier and a cage fighter.’ The former bantam is humming, without making a sound. ‘The old man with the beard smokes, gobbles down, fucks and drinks everything in sight.’ ‘I am an all-rounder,’ bellows the sailor through a mouth blood-red from betel nuts. ‘And that giant there was the chief minister’s security guard. Problems? Call him.’ He gives me his number. I grab my phone and call it. ‘I want to draw, but I’m surrounded by gangsters,’ I say. He looks at me and nods. They clear a path.

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