“In this watercolor painting, Henk Pander captures the volume of love letters written daily by his parents from 1932 until they married in 1937. As the eldest of ten children, Pander kept the letters intact. He recalled how they filled up an entire suitcase, and earlier efforts to organize and collate the letters led him to complete submission in accepting the messy pile we witness here as a sheer expression of love. Pander shares, ‘They are an amazing character study of my young parents, my father living in Haarlem as a graphic designer and my mother the youngest daughter of the blacksmith in Garijp. All together they are a complete time capsule of the period just before the war in Europe.’
Similarly, this moment of living through a pandemic may likely bring us to an urgency and tenderness to love, adding to the quilt of hashtags being shared these days: #loveinthetimeofcorona or #loveinthetimeofcovid19.”
—Grace Kook-Anderson, The Arlene and Harold Schnitzer Curator of Northwest Art
Henk Pander (American, born Netherlands, born 1937). Lovers Letter IV, 2006. Watercolor on paper. Gift from Gary Lewis Moe in memory of Kevin Michael McGee, 2015.92.108 © Henk Pander
