Grazing cows on a dance floor, that's the Dutch landscape. The artist duo PolakVanBekkum, Esther Polak and Ivar van Bekkum, drew their grazing patterns and titled them Grazing choreographies. Last month they drew a mega-aquarelle of the grazing tracks of multicolored dairy cattle at Oerol.
It began in 2018 along a meadow. After 15 years of working with drawing routes using GPS and digital mapping, we got the desire to make drawings even without the literal use, but with the mindset of these technologies.
The moment was ripe for a new way of working. Could we, just by hand, also draw routes based on observation? We thought of the Impressionists, who went into the landscape with a field easel, and there, often also inspired by photography and never without a straw hat, discovered the quick oil sketch as a means of capturing light and the landscape in all its variability. Even in high school, during art history class, that had seemed like a wonderful life to Esther. And had then been reason enough to play hooky on a regular basis.
We wanted to take such an art-historically relevant step. Hop outside! Time to play hooky from that eternal digital puzzle at the computer. Time to free route data from that straitjacket. We looked in the closets of our studio. Was there still a sketchbook gathering dust somewhere in there? Did we still have some pencils lying around somewhere?
What makes them make their choice in that even green plain for the first bites of the day?
That's how we ended up past that meadow. Back to the cows. We had never managed to equip an entire herd ("flock" in hereditary language) with GPS loggers, even though it had always been a deep desire, to understand how cows approach their pasture. What makes them make their choice in that even green plain for the first bites of the day? Were they feeling the same stress we remembered from the predigital period, when we thought it normal to start the day at the studio with a blank sheet of white paper?
We grabbed the sketchbook and pencils. There we stood: we with our white sheet, they with their green plain. An old tripod we had converted into a mobile drawing table, the straw hat we didn't have yet, but fortunately we both had a cap, because the sun was already beginning to shine nicely. In the meadow walked five red-brown cows and two calves.
We soon found that we could only just keep up with those cows
It was an idyllic spot, at a nature campground that also kept a few of these cows, to give guests a rural experience, complete with manure smell. We soon found that we could only just keep up with these cows. What looks peaceful at first glance, a herd of grazing cattle, turned out to be very dynamic in route reality. We had to keep paying close attention because those fire-red cows all have the same solid coat with no recognizable spots. They walked with each other, split up again, went to the drinking trough. The calves pretty much always stayed with their mothers.
Just as we were discussing whether we should change the color of those, or whether that would be too literal and illustrative, a group of middle-aged cycling campers stopped, curious about our work. Politely they asked if they could take a look. They were allowed, but we had to continue, keep looking, or else there would be a gap in one or more routes, and the lines had to continue, because cows just can't fly.
Still quite difficult, isn't it, drawing a cow like that?
Attentively the campers watched the abstract play of lines and how we frantically looked up and down: to the meadow, to the sheet, to the meadow, to the sheet. The concentration sucked us into a tunnel. Although it felt rude we did not engage in conversation. After five minutes, the cyclists continued on their way. Just in time we heard one of them say to another: "It's still quite difficult to draw a cow, isn't it?
2026
A selection of our Grazing choreographies is going to be the starting point for a group exhibition at Drawing Centre Diepenheim. It will be organized by artistic director Noa Zuidervaart in collaboration with curator Lieneke Hulshoff and will take place from June 13 to September 5, 2026. Various drawings of different formats.
2025
At Oerol, we drew two Grazing choreographies as a performance. Even if the cows were in the barn, or walking in a different pasture, the audience could still see where the cows had walked. We worked together with farmer Neeke van Zwol, drawing her herd of over 50 cows for eight days, always on the same two sheets of paper. Result: Two drawings of 500×125 cm. The performance took place between June 14 and 22, 2025 at the Akkerweg in Kinnum under the title CANCELL.
2024
In collaboration with five farms in the Diepenheim area, we made twenty drawings. It was the first time for us to work on a drawing together and at the same time. Each drawing lasted about an hour and a half. The realization was possible thanks to a residency of the Mondriaan Fund at Drawing Centre Diepenheim.
2022
During the high point of farmer protes- at the invitation of Museum IJsselstein, we set to work on a new series of Grazing choreographies to draw in the Green Heart. After a few rejections from farms, who had something else on their minds other than art, we were welcome at IJsseltap farm Kuyt. Drawings in sizes 50×70 and 30×50 cm, portrait and landscape. One of the drawings is part of the collection of Museum IJsselstein.
2021
Karen Polder designed for us the ingeniously bound book Grazing choreographies, which is still available through our website. The book contains the 48 drawings from 2019, which we made in the Swiss Alps near Tschlin and the flat landscape of Groningen. In addition to the grazing patterns of the cows, the drawings show the differences in dynamics between these two landscapes. Each drawing is accompanied by a journal text that talks about the experience of this new form of drawing.
2019
In this year, we made our first series of 48 Grazing choreographies during a residency at Somalgors74 (Initiative for locally engaged cultural projects) in Tschlin in the Swiss Alps and a working period in the Groningen village of Feerwerd.
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