They express an emotional state of mind, put forward with an exceptional power. They convey a particular character to the picture, beyond the superficial notes of the water-colours.

In the water scenes Thijs Sterk found his inspiration also in working after nature, but the imagination gradually loosened itself from the observed forms.

The above mentioned "Loosdrecht" can be seen as an example of his striving after autonomy, after disconnecting the image from the observation. In the background one can still recognize the tree covered banks of the lake but in the painting of the water, another world looms, abstract in all its facets.

What can be seen In the painting "Loosdrecht" as a painting inside a painting, a polarity between the perceivable and the abstract, the specific and the universal, has developed as a gradual process.

Waterschap 2 z.j. olieverf op doek 85 x 90

Nature appears to hold possibilities leading to abstraction, a recognizable shape can apparently be filled with associations, suggesting a different, imaginary world.

He set eyes on a different landscape than the one he knew: the landscape of the mind, with which he would identify in the end.