Artistic talent runs in the Baarschers family. Dad was good at drawing and linoleum cutting, crafts learned while being educated in Amsterdam for a career in the printing industry. Unfortunately I have found no samples of his work unless they would be the stamps he so deftly produced to provide fake identities for people hiding from the Nazis in wartime. I do remember a beautiful large multi-colour lino print of a Bengal tiger, but in going through some of his effects this summer (dad passed away last fall at age 95) I have not been able to locate it. Maybe it will still pop up somewhere as we have not been able to look at everything that was there – dad literally and religiously saved almost everything.

However earlier this year I was contacted by the stepdaughter of my uncle Herman (my father's youngest brother) in Australia who passed away more than twenty years ago, and she still had his photo albums and one painting and two drawings made by their other brother Henk. I was very happy to receive them as much family history gets lost so quickly when people pass from the scene as photos get dispersed along with other mementos and are not always treated with the regard that they should be.

Uncle Henk was also artistically gifted, and taught himself to paint. This painting was likely done in the early years of the war and is a view from my grandparent's backyard in the town of Winterswijk in the Netherlands. Uncle Henk was active in the resistance at that time and in 1944 was betrayed and arrested. He was interrogated by the Gestapo and sent to the concentration camp in Vught in the southern part of the Netherlands. As the Allies approached he and many others were summarily executed.

A 1930's photo from the same backyard One of the pen and ink drawings

I remember the backyard scene from when I was barely five years old. My grandparents lived in a large house near the town centre. They lived on the upper floor, as my grandfather operated a bookstore with his brother on the main floor and they also had a printshop in the basement. There was a vegetable garden and a chicken coop in the back and I recall putting my fingers through the mesh and promptly being bitten by one of the chickens. I don't know if there is a connection, but chicken is still one of my favourite meats to this day.

My father also had three sisters, two of whom also were artistically inclined. The youngest sister, Titia, just turned 90 and earlier this year had a solo exhibition of paintings she made of scenes in Surinam where she lived for a large part of her married life. She now has lived for many years in the province of Friesland in the northern part of the Netherlands, in the small town of Buitenpost to be precise. Until quite recently she was part of a local painter's group and loved to paint landscapes. She would send out Christmas cards with reproductions of her paintings on them and and I scanned this one, a typical dutch rural winter scene.

One of Titia's paintings of a dutch rural winter scene

Mainly this short blog is a tribute for uncle Henk who gave his life so we can enjoy the freedom we have today. He might have pursued further in his artistic endeavours and who knows what beautiful artwork we never got to see. Uncle Henk was slated to take over the bookstore with my father, who would have run the printshop. Fate decided otherwise and as wars do, they end many lives prematurely and forever alter the course of others. It gives pause for thought and reason to be extremely thankful for what we have. Go hug someone near to you and then go and paint something (which for some of us might just be the fence).