Erik Mattijssen (born 1957 in Veenendaal, the Netherlands) always works on paper (sometimes drawing directly onto the wall) with the usual drawing materials, such as pastels, pencil and gouache. His subjects are at the interstices between fantasy and reality. These still-lifes of interiors, flowers, plants and garden vistas seem familiar, but something is afoot. Mattijssen is playing a game with his reproduction of reality; giving us his own take on it. Colour is not used here to refer to the reality but rather as an element in its own right to create an independent reality. Because this artist works layer upon layer, his drawings do not immediately strike one as drawings but more as paintings. There are no people in Mattijssen works: they seem to have just left the stage. Yet their story can still be read in the traces they have left behind, which the viewer can fill in.