I can hardly believe that I started the painting 'Gates' at the end of October 2023. It started out as a very bright and light painting, inspired by a drawing in my sketchbook.
I still remember David coming into the room and saying something like “That's going to be a happy painting!”. Today I know that at that time, out of an inner pull, I had once again opened the door to a certain “theme” that was to rummage through my innermost being deeply and comprehensively.
When I realized at the beginning of 2024 while working on the painting that it wanted to take a different path than the light and cheerful one, I was already quite deeply involved with this very theme. Five years earlier, I had avoided it fearfully and for completely understandable reasons.
I suddenly had the desire to include very dark areas in my painting: a night blue and deep shadows. I felt that I wanted to unite something, complete it, make it whole and integrate it. By painting the almost black blue in the background, I felt excited and relieved at the same time. I was getting closer to the truth within me as I followed my painterly impulses. And even though David was surprised and perhaps a little “disappointed” by the development of the painting, I was completely indifferent to any external expectations. I helped the painting to become what it wanted to become, and that was all that mattered.
'Gates' is the 4th painting in the series 'Living Into Utopia' and it is the painting in the series where things start to get really serious. The first painting, 'The Word Surrender', was a surrender in the best sense of the word. Then came 'Something in me looks at the sea and at everything else too', with which I guessed what kind of state it might be that I wanted to move towards. After that I painted 'Roots' and dealt with stabilizing and grounding. And then came 'Gates', and 'Gates' blew me away.
I live what my paintings show either at the same time or shortly after them. They are often a little ahead of me and give me an idea of what I am about to move towards.
Imagine there is something in your life that, no matter how much you twist and turn it, no matter where you place your imagination, cannot be grasped and, above all, cannot be “removed”. This “something” also has the potential to shake the foundations of your entire life, and it is impossible to predict whether the structure that holds your life together at the moment and that you love and want to preserve will survive the confrontation with the issue, let alone the integration of the issue.
It felt like standing in the fire, and reminded me as much of the incredible burning I felt when my children were born. The moment when the head comes out. A brief, completely unbelievable moment that doesn't seem to go away and in which I wondered if I could endure this stretching for another millisecond.
There are situations in life that are like initiations, like gates that you go through and where it is clear that you will come out the other side differently than you went in.
There were two gates for me. I was allowed to choose. There was one path that would have been a good path, except for the serious fact that I would have had to make a small, precious, imaginary casket to keep inside me for all time what I didn't think I could live. A foreign body that isolates itself - but does not integrate at present. A path that made me wonder how I would later assess my decision for him in the moments before my death.
And there was a second way in which I was able to maintain my integrity, but which threw me into deep abysses of fear of loss. Nothing was safe anymore, the conflict was omnipresent. I had to experience that my words were not enough or not the right ones, that I was struggling to make myself understood. Behaviours and patterns came to the surface that I thought I had long overcome, and at some point I realized that the outcome of the whole thing was not entirely in my hands.
What was strong in me the whole time was the desire to simply be authentic.
I came into this world in this life to free myself. It is my life's theme to free myself again and again from imaginary or real constraints. I do this with my best intentions and out of an innocent knowledge that I am free. But for the sake of my authenticity, I cannot avoid disappointing and hurting people. Probably no one can avoid this if they are striving for their natural expression. But when my counterpart is tormented by fears and horror scenarios of the future, I stand there helplessly, shaken and with one foot already in the process of turning back from this difficult path, which perhaps demands too much of everyone after all.
The painting 'Gates' is very intense in a quiet way. It makes you feel that a decision has been made at this very moment, like a sword. It is so luminous and warm that, despite the urgency, a certainty emerges that the path chosen is the right one.
On this path, I walked with a feeling as if another force, also with the best intentions, was widening and stretching my heart. It was painful and beautiful at the same time for a while. I have walked with the question of whether this is possible, whether I can allow myself to feel what feels true for me. There were countless invitations for my fearfulness to simply turn around, and there was always my voice speaking about what was important to me and what I wanted. That spoke out knowing it would cause pain to loved ones. Along the way, I got to know myself in a way I didn't think possible. As if I suddenly had the ability to hold opposites together in one room. Even though I have wished more than once not to feel the inevitability that made me choose this path, I now feel more complete, freer and more with myself than ever before.