Off Planet Perspective | Drawings by Joost Elffers
The drawings started to take shape in 2020, the year that our human condition and the planet itself forced Elffers, along with everyone else, inside. There, his drawing practice journeyed into a world of circularity—circles, spirals, spheres—vibrations, and numbers of resonance. Thousands of hours of drawing became a meditation on an inner wavelength.
According to Elffers, “We humans must learn to see with our hearts. There is nothing wrong with looking through the eyes, to which we have grown accustomed, but these eyes are designed for problem solving—to find food, to search out lovers and mates, to keep our physical body safe. The eye that our heart peers through sees only oneness; it feels only pure affection for this universe of many worlds and all the multitude of beings within it.
I start each of my drawings with my ‘heart’s eye.’ I begin with lines circling around a center point—pushing out to form a circle—a universal motion on every level of existence: an electron around a proton, a child around a parent, a planet around the sun, and galaxies circling a universal heart and point of origin. Like all these fundamental unities, my hand makes a circle on the page, and all images grow from that.”
The drawings that have emerged from that process are at once simple and startling. They are representative of the many dimensions, wavelengths, and universal beings that the heart’s eye can see—from a perspective off-planet.
The exhibition also features symbolic objects as well as illustrated books from the 17th century from the collection of the Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica. The creators of these books were on the same pathway as Elffers with his drawings—one that is not linear, but of all time, connected in time and space.
Elffers, a native of Amsterdam, is the son of Dutch artist Dick Elffers and photographer Emmy Andriesse. He studied graphic design at the Royal Academy in The Hague and has enjoyed a successful career as a publishing and design entrepreneur, with numerous bestselling books to his credit. He lives in New York City with his wife, artist Pat Steir.
