Midnight
a memory, a dream
A moonlit silent scream
Confused, a handful of
tears. We forgot ...
Midnight
a memory, a dream
A moonlit silent scream
Confused, a handful of
tears. We forgot ...
'Suixtinction' is self-inflicted extinction, where species destroy vital conditions for life through overconsumption, pollution, and resource depletion. It's happening now, with dire consequences felt globally. This term and the related digital artwork mashup signify an urgent wakeup call to address these pressing environmental issues.
Wandering between dreams and reality on a crisp winter morning, the artwork 'Blooming Winter Dreams' captures a magical 3D effect, created by Karina Mosser painting on a photograph. Part of 'The Narrow Path' collection, both original and various print editions are up for grabs—drop a message to own one.
Jacob Berghoef's "Earth Cries" combines art and poetry, expressing grief over Earth Overshoot Day 2023. The work highlights the toxic, irreversible damage we've caused, living off the earth's credit without a way to repay. It's a wake-up call to consider our incessant consumption and its grave, lasting impacts on the planet.
June 1, 2023 — Comments are off for this post.
Marshes captivate with their mysterious allure and fragile beauty, influencing Jacob Berghoef's latest 'Flat Lands' and 'Digital Art' series. His transformative digital art, derived from photos taken at Overasseltse En Hatertse Vennen, manifests in limited edition prints that embody the ethereal marshland atmosphere through surreal editing. His works are available for sale, complete with authenticity guarantees.
May 18, 2023 — Comments are off for this post.
In "Spring Morning At The Pond," an artwork from the collection "Secret Places," I expressed the serene beauty of spring using digital techniques. Using impressionism and surrealism as the foundation, I transform photographs through color and effects to evoke a surreal atmosphere. Limited and open editions are available for purchase, with the limited edition including a signature and certificate of authenticity.
In the morning of my dream
Only shadows will remain
Echoing the light of my thoughts
'Echo Of My Thoughts' is a new digital artwork, made by transforming one of my own impressionistic photographs through extensive editing to achieve a surreal effect.
My work encourages reflection on nature's beauty and the consequences of human destructiveness.
Lying on our backs in the woods, we observe nature's symphony flying above, and the gentle dance of light amid the trees—a phenomenon known as Shinrin-Yoku, or "forest bathing," celebrated in Japan. It refreshes the body and mind, enhancing health and well-being. Anuscka's original blog post inspired a digital artwork, capturing this therapeutic essence.
December 31, 2022 — Comments are off for this post.
The first light
Slowly awakening trees,
for a brief moment
woven in liquid gold
'The First Light (2)' is a new artwork in my collection 'Wavy Fields’.
This is a digital artwork, printed with high-quality ink on museum-quality cotton paper (Hahnemühle Photo Rag® 308gsm). The work comes in a limited edition of 10, signed and with a certificate of authenticity.
For these artworks, I start with one or more photographs made by myself. I edit it in multiple process runs and in several layers by color manipulation and adding and editing multiple digital photographic effects. I do that until a surrealistic atmosphere is created that touches me and tells the story I want to tell.
The photograph(s) I begin with has/have an impressionistic, surrealistic or abstract realist style, which is the basis for all my work.
Prints are available, ask for a quote or contact me through a message. Prints are also available in my Saatchi Art portfolio at the artwork page
December 31, 2022 — Comments are off for this post.
Morning glow
The sun kisses the clouds
Blinded by the eye
A beautiful autumn morning. The sun appears on the horizon, its warm light kisses the clouds above the fields in Kobberø, Thy region, North Jutland, Denmark.
'Kissing The Clouds' is a new artwork in my collection 'Wavy Fields’.
This is a digital artwork, printed with high-quality ink on museum-quality cotton paper (Hahnemühle Photo Rag® 308gsm). The work comes in a limited edition of 10, signed and with a certificate of authenticity.
For these artworks, I start with one or more photographs made by myself. I edit it in multiple process runs and in several layers by color manipulation and adding and editing multiple digital photographic effects. I do that until a surrealistic atmosphere is created that touches me and tells the story I want to tell.
The photograph(s) I begin with has/have an impressionistic, surrealistic or abstract realist style, which is the basis for all my work.
Prints are available, ask for a quote or contact me through a message. Prints are also available in my Saatchi Art portfolio at the artwork page
ALL WE NEED IS LESS CONSUMING
Through my artworks I ask you to reflect for a moment on the nature around you, on the beautiful feeling that nature can evoke, on your actions to support the wellbeing of the earth and everything that lives on it, on what humanity loses when many of us continue on the destructive path of ever more greed and consuming, on how you can survive in this rapidly changing world…
Want to know your ecological footprint?
Visit this website: https://www.footprintcalculator.org/home/en
Want to reduce your ecological footprint?
Ask me, I will help you. For free. Or simply choose Your Footprint in the menu
December 27, 2022 — Comments are off for this post.
Thick clouds of black
smoke darken the sun
Eyes tear,
trees cry
The sun colors the evening
in the hues of the flames that
eat tree after tree
How high may become
the price the future
will have to pay?
I feel it as my mission to make people aware of the beauty, power and simultaneously fragility of nature. Yet at the same time, this sometimes feels like hypocrisy because I am part of the society that is causing the destruction of the habitability of the earth. Even though I do my best to live simply and keep my carbon footprint considerably smaller than "the use" of 1 earth.
At times when I feel that, I also feel an urge to create a work with a poignant message....
This is a digital artwork, printed with high-quality ink on museum-quality cotton paper (Hahnemühle Photo Rag® 308gsm). The work comes in a limited edition of 10, signed and with a certificate of authenticity.
For these artworks, I start with one or more photographs made by myself. I edit it in multiple process runs and in several layers by color manipulation and adding and editing multiple digital photographic effects. I do that until a surrealistic atmosphere is created that touches me and tells the story I want to tell.
The photograph(s) I begin with has/have an impressionistic, surrealistic or abstract realist style, which is the basis for all my work.
Prints are available, ask for a quote or contact me through a message. Prints are also available in my Saatchi Art portfolio at the artwork page
ALL WE NEED IS LESS CONSUMING
Through my artworks I ask you to reflect for a moment on the nature around you, on the beautiful feeling that nature can evoke, on your actions to support the wellbeing of the earth and everything that lives on it, on what humanity loses when many of us continue on the destructive path of ever more greed and consuming, on how you can survive in this rapidly changing world…
Want to know your ecological footprint?
Visit this website: https://www.footprintcalculator.org/home/en
Want to reduce your ecological footprint?
Ask me, I will help you. For free. Or simply choose Your Footprint in the menu
December 27, 2022 — Comments are off for this post.
Thick clouds of brown
smoke darken the sun
Eyes tear,
birds cry
The sun colors the evening
in the hues of the poison that
factories vomit
How high may become
the price the future
will have to pay?
I feel it is my mission to make people aware of the beauty and at the same time fragility of nature. At the same time, this sometimes feels like hypocrisy because I am part of the society that causes the destruction of the earth's habitability. Even though I do my best to live simply and keep my ecological footprint considerably smaller than "the use" of 1 earth.
At times when I feel that, I also feel an urge to create a work with a more poignant message....
This is a digital artwork, printed with high-quality ink on museum-quality cotton paper (Hahnemühle Photo Rag® 308gsm). The work comes in a limited edition of 10, signed and with a certificate of authenticity.
For these artworks, I start with one or more photographs made by myself. I edit it in multiple process runs and in several layers by color manipulation and adding and editing multiple digital photographic effects. I do that until a surrealistic atmosphere is created that touches me and tells the story I want to tell.
The photograph(s) I begin with has/have an impressionistic, surrealistic or abstract realist style, which is the basis for all my work.
Prints are available, ask for a quote or contact me through a message. Prints are also available in my Saatchi Art portfolio at the artwork page
ALL WE NEED IS LESS CONSUMING
Through my artworks I ask you to reflect for a moment on the nature around you, on the beautiful feeling that nature can evoke, on your actions to support the wellbeing of the earth and everything that lives on it, on what humanity loses when many of us continue on the destructive path of ever more greed and consuming, on how you can survive in this rapidly changing world…
Want to know your ecological footprint?
Visit this website: https://www.footprintcalculator.org/home/en
Want to reduce your ecological footprint?
Ask me, I will help you. For free. Or simply choose Your Footprint in the menu
October 7, 2022 — Comments are off for this post.
[...] When she wakes
she lifts the shade, impatient for a glimpse
of flight: a sparrow, a swallowtail—
something with wings she can memorize.
The above stanza is from Laura Ann Reed's poem "As Clouds Before the Wind", and inspired me to make this artwork.
Laura Ann is a poet from the US, her work particularly appeals to me. Moreover, she is a very inspiring woman; I am fortunate to have a regular email contact with her.
Read more about Laura Ann and enjoy some of her poems via this link to her website. The entire poem is below the image of the artwork.
'A Glimpse Of Flight' is an artwork in my collections 'Secret Places'.
Text continues below the image
Laura Ann's poem:
As Clouds Before the Wind
There are borders toward which
she moves, although she can’t say
what galaxies they lie between.
Daily, she prepares for a parting
in the trees, waits for the window
hinge to break, the pane to crack
and fall. She’s ready for the wind
to fill her room. She has one foot
planted on another planet,
and in her sleep she yields naked
to the Eros of its magnetic field—
its ethereal embrace. When she wakes
she lifts the shade, impatient for a glimpse
of flight: a sparrow, a swallowtail—
something with wings she can memorize.
This is a digital artwork, printed with high-quality ink on museum-quality cotton paper (Hahnemühle Photo Rag® 308gsm). The work comes in a limited edition of 10, signed and with a certificate of authenticity.
For these artworks, I start with one or more photographs made by myself. I edit it in multiple process runs and in several layers by color manipulation and adding and editing multiple digital photographic effects. I do that until a surrealistic atmosphere is created that touches me and tells the story I want to tell.
The photograph(s) I begin with has/have an impressionistic, surrealistic or abstract realist style, which is the basis for all my work.
Prints are available, ask for a quote or contact me through a message. Prints are also available in my Saatchi Art portfolio at the artwork page
ALL WE NEED IS LESS CONSUMING
Through my artworks I ask you to reflect for a moment on the nature around you, on the beautiful feeling that nature can evoke, on your actions to support the wellbeing of the earth and everything that lives on it, on what humanity loses when many of us continue on the destructive path of ever more greed and consuming, on how you can survive in this rapidly changing world…
Want to know your ecological footprint?
Visit this website: https://www.footprintcalculator.org/home/en
Want to reduce your ecological footprint?
Ask me, I will help you. For free. Or simply choose Your Footprint in the menu
Swimming In Tears II
While trees cry
fish shed their tears
in endless waves
In the project Drowned Earth I show you how I see the earth of a century from now. A fusion of the forests and the oceans, with hopefully in the distant future a rich ecosystem that has managed to adapt to the new circumstances.
Living In The Other World
Mangroves, just as seagrass beds and coral reefs, keep coastal zones healthy. Mangroves provide essential habitat for thousands of species. They also stabilize shorelines, preventing erosion and protecting the land — and the people who live there — from waves and storms.
August 22, 2022 — Comments are off for this post.
I have the right to fly
To grow, to prosper
The right to be
To raise offspring
Feed you and others
To be fed myself
Who defends our rights?
Does a human being have more right to a clean earth and a safe and healthy life than a bird, a tree, a flower?
If your answer to this is "Yes," then why?
Hasn't that human being forfeited that right by polluting the earth, by risking his health through bad eating habits and by using year after year more than what the earth can provide?
Does a Western person have as much right to it as a person in a developing country who has never been guilty of that unbridled consuming, polluting and unhealthy behavior?
Do I have a RIGHT to live in a healthy environment? Or is life a FAVOR of nature, which I may enjoy as long as I behave nicely and don't make a mess of my body and my surroundings, and that of people around me and people far away?
I can get terribly irritated by the cries of Western people about their rights. Right to clean air, right to clean water, right to healthy food, right to... In my opinion, we in the 'developed countries' have long since forfeited all our environmental rights, and yet we continue as if the amount of available rights for us can never be exhausted.
Wake up, it's long run out. There is no clean water anymore, no clean air, no clean fertile land. Your rights, my rights, they all stop, where and when we abuse the rights of nature.
We spoiled children, we must earn our rights for today and tomorrow and the rights of humanity in the future. By sustainable living, by consuming significantly less, by cleaning up what we ourselves have polluted.
'Right To Fly' is a new digital artwork in my collections 'Stray Birds' and 'Digital Art'.
Prints are available, ask for a quote or contact me through a message. Prints are also available in my Saatchi Art portfolio at the artwork page.
Through my artworks I ask you to reflect for a moment on the nature around you, on the beautiful feeling that nature can evoke, on your actions to support the wellbeing of the earth and everything that lives on it, on what humanity loses when many of us continue on the destructive path of ever more greed and consuming, on how you can survive in this rapidly changing world…
Want to know your ecological footprint?
Visit this website: https://www.footprintcalculator.org/home/en
Want to reduce your ecological footprint?
Ask me, I will help you. For free. Or simply choose Your Footprint in the menu
August 15, 2022 — Comments are off for this post.
Wandering Dreams
Dreams wander
between the trees,
waiting, longing
to be reborn as
common sense
in a new time
Many people dream of an earth that is safe and clean, that is treated with care so that it can give enough to all its inhabitants without becoming exhausted.
Only when all those dreams come to life in common sense and people take action to live differently will that dream become a reality.
Do you ever dream about that too? And what did you do today to make those dreams come alive?
I washed myself this morning with cold water, yesterday I grabbed my bike to go shopping. Then I covered a section of the vegetable garden where the harvest is finished with a layer of shredded garden waste. As food for the new sowing season next year, to cover the soil in its resting period against drying out and prevent the growth of too many weeds...
'Wandering Dreams' is a new digital artwork in my collections 'Secret Places' and 'Digital Art’↗️.
This digital artwork was created through a collaboration with Janet Akselrud↗️, here is her website↗️.
She generously gave me permission to use one of her digital artworks.
Thank you Janet, I hope you like the result !
Prints are available, ask for a quote or contact me through a message. Prints are also available in my Saatchi Art portfolio at the artwork page↗️.
ALL WE NEED IS LESS CONSUMING
Through my artworks I ask you to reflect for a moment on the nature around you, on the beautiful feeling that nature can evoke, on your actions to support the wellbeing of the earth and everything that lives on it, on what humanity loses when many of us continue on the destructive path of ever more greed and consuming, on how you can survive in this rapidly changing world…
Want to know your ecological footprint?
Visit this website: https://www.footprintcalculator.org/home/en
Want to reduce your ecological footprint?
Ask me, I will help you. For free. Or simply choose Your Footprint in the menu
July 11, 2022 — Comments are off for this post.
[scorched]
adjective
UK /skɔːtʃt/ US /skɔːrtʃt/
slightly burned, or damaged by fire or heat
While the ice caps are melting and the oceans and seas are warming and being robbed and poisoned, humans on land are not sitting still either. Or perhaps better to say, that's where the misery begins. Because that's where humans have settled and do most of their 'ingenuity'.
The Western world should really be called the 'land of never enough'.
There where consumption was invented, at the same time as growth for growth's sake and the 'creation of shareholder value'. In other words, profits that are never high enough.
Our addiction to money is so strong, that we are prepared to exhaust the earth for it, to destroy plants and animals and to make the world of the children and grandchildren of humanity dry, or flooded, and hot. In many places even unbearably hot.
Many people even think (still!) that the consequences of global warming will not be too bad. After all, we are smart, a technical solution will be found that will allow us to continue living the way we are used to...
...larger and larger parts of the earth are being scorched. Scorching by the ever-increasing temperatures. By spraying poison to make the yield of intensive agriculture as high as possible. And by the emission of poison into the air, land and water as a by-product of our endless consumption. Scorched by the fires that rage around the world day in and day out as a result of increasing drought. And by fires started by humans to turn even more nature into monoculture with endless fields of genetically engineered crops on exhausted, diseased soil.
You all know by now that a text like this accompanying a work of art is not quite my style. But sometimes you just have to go outside, look up at the sky and scream really loud...
A cry for climate action...
These artworks are digital transformations of a photograph. Printed on order with high-quality ink on museum-quality, acid-free cotton/rag paper (Hahnemühle Photo Rag® 308gsm). The work comes in a limited edition of 10, signed and with a certificate of authenticity. But of course, it is also available as Open Edition print, without signature and not numbered. Available in any size you desire !
Maximum size is 150Wx150H cm / 60Wx60H inches. The work can be printed in any size up to that maximum, so please let me know the size you would prefer.
I start with one or more photographs made by myself to create these artworks. Then I use digital painting, color adjusting and adding and transforming multiple artistic textures and effects. I do this until there is a surreal atmosphere that touches me and tells the story I want to tell you.
'Scorched Earth (1)' is an artwork in my collection 'Secret Places'.
Prints are available, ask for a quote or contact me through a message. Prints are also available in my Saatchi Art portfolio at the artwork page↗️.
Through my artworks I ask you to reflect for a moment on the nature around you, on the beautiful feeling that nature can evoke. Thus to think about your actions to support the wellbeing of the earth and everything that lives on it. And on what humanity loses when many of us continue on the destructive path of ever more greed and consuming. And please, reflect on how you can survive in this rapidly changing world…
So do you want to know your ecological footprint?
Then visit this website: https://www.footprintcalculator.org/home/en
And do you want to reduce your ecological footprint?
Then ask me, I will help you. For free. Or simply visit my website and choose in the menu for Your Footprint.
And if you appreciate my writings and art and want to support me, you can buy me a piece of fruit here: https://ko-fi.com/jacobberghoef, thank you 🍏 !
So are you interested in more? Then read what I wrote about System Change, Man's impact on the earth, Organic Change, Regenerative Agriculture, Regeneration
Travelers
Dark sounds fill the void
A strong back breaks the waves
Travelers of the deep
But do humans never succeed in saving a species from extinction?
Of course they do, and the humpback whale is a good example.
Blooming Forest
Bright sunlight dances
Coral reefs breathe new colors
Old forests in bloom
Would coral reefs stand a chance in the future, protected by drowned temperate rain forests in warmed waters in now too cold areas?
Bloom
Pulsating blue
float gently between the trees
forest in bloom
I show you how I see the earth from, let's say, a few centuries from now. An amalgamation of the forests and the oceans. With hopefully in the distant future a rich ecosystem that has managed to adapt to the new conditions.
Swimming In Tears
While trees cry
fish shed their tears
in endless waves
When I imagine what the earth will look like in 100 years, the image that comes to mind most emphatically is one of an earth with sharply rising sea levels.
Want to inquire about an art piece?
All content © 2014-2020 Jacob Berghoef