Short notes on how it all began and the peculiarities of non-linear art
I am lying in my bed and watch a big square painting appear on the ceiling. It is summer 2011 and my inner voice has been giving me the more and more urgent advice to paint for two years. I was more than reluctant. From time to time I would half-heartedly paint for an hour or two and leave it at that. In hindsight I must confess that I was scared by the seriousness of my calling. I had changed my profession a couple of times and since 1995 I had been freelancing as a dramaturge and writing screenplays. Only nine years ago I very powerful spiritual awakening had turned my life upside down. I had began to assist people by using my intuitive abilities and my inner vision. The last thing I wanted was a new big change.
And here I am, sober and wide awake, looking at an abstract painting on the ceiling where there shouldn’t be one. I cannot remember how long I stared at the painting. Without the shadow of a doubt I know: I must paint this. Up to today I have not painted the exact same painting I saw, but when I painted „The Key“ (see front page) I felt I was getting closer. During the following years my paintings would often be accompanied by intense visions, until they got less and less and currently are not necessary for my inspiration.
As I began to experiment anew with paint and canvas, an inner voice said very sternly: You must give importance to every single stroke. This is possibly the most important advice I got so far concerning my art. It solves a lot of problems before they arise.
Very soon I realised that I have almost no influence on the choice of colors for a painting – I see them with my inner eyes. Immediately I know whether I have them ready on my shelf, can mix them or need to get them. Once I am in the process of painting, I am in a field with no thought. It is only when my brush touches the canvas that I know whether I will be making a fine line of an inch length, a circle as big as the canvas or a whole colorfield. That is the reason why I use just one brush – hopefully neither too small nor too big – because it is the only way for me to keep in the flow.
If I try to move in a way that does not interpret the preceding impulse correctly, my arm freezes in front of the canvas. In this case I need to step back a little and start anew. Every now and then I still differ from the inspiration and when that happens, I can feel it in my whole body like a wrong note. Simultaneously a solution to the problem forms and it only takes a couple of strokes to restore the lost harmony. At one point I tried to take drawing lessons and my right arm got so rigid, that I realised I had to take different roads in order to further develop my technique.
Another characteristic of my work is painting in many, many layers. On some paintings are hundreds of ultrathin layers on top of each other, only the top layers are visible. I can feel the layers working with each other and influencing each other. To paint like that takes devotion and more patience that I ever thought I was capable of.
All of my works develop in a non-linear way. Even the materials come to me in a non-linear fashion, sometimes I get what turns out to be needed last in the beginning of a process that can take years. Everything is created simultaneously and from all directions at once. Of course there are physical limits to that procedure. Still, a canvas might have dozens of layers of paint in one corner and be completely naked in another. This may not change until the very last days of finishing an artwork, when there are waves of colors flowing over the uncovered area.
There is literally music in my art. Every color is accompanied by sound. That is also the reason why synaesthetes see tones as colors. Rhythm is also part of the painting process – I dab and draw to tunes only I can hear. It is by no means all the same whether I draw something from left to right or the other way round. Every single move has a meaning and every dot changes the whole picture. The same is true for our whole life. Every decision we make, even the smallest ones, shapes not only our present, but also our past and our future.
It is an honour and a pleasure for me to share my insights into what goes on behind the visible through my art.