I N N O C E N C E

SERIES OF THE ILLUSION OF PURE LIGHT.

The series of works “INNOCENCE“ consists mainly of large format paintings that have occasionally been created since 2014. It is a work-in-progress and  so this series is updated and constantly but irregularly supplemented with new paintings.

The central element of this series of works is the light. Brightness as a symbol of the beginning and of birth, of the morning, of purity. It is  lightness, carefree, still immaculate. Just the innocence. This innocence is beautiful, ideal, immortal. This innocence is emotional, it moves and is promise.

This series works with a lighter color palette and is dominated by very different yellows and reds. Positive paintings that counterbalance all the confusion and madness around us. The pieces of the series are my answer to the negative events in this world, according to the Bible credo (Revelation 3:16): Be hot, be cold, but not only lukewarm. We must resist the melancholy before it drowns us, we must rebel against all the inner and outer debris deserts. We should act as a warrior of light (in the sense of Paulo Coelho, who coined this term) and make our fate positive and intense. We take position, defend the good points of view. We make mistakes. But we fight. But unfortunately the story does not end with the light alone.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Of course there’s a drop of bitterness. Light also creates shadows. We aren’t always able to control what we’ve started. The terrific Hemingway found the right words for that dilemma:

»ALL THINGS TRULY WICKED START FROM INNOCENCE.«

Ernest Hemingway

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Nothing is just good. At the beginning perhaps, at the moment of creation. But time corrupts, relativizes, pollutes. There is this dualism in our minds. Man is man’s wolf – Homo homini lupus – in the sense of Thomas Hobbes. No consideration has only one side. So there is also a human tendency to ideologize on the subject of innocence. The quest for brightness and for light, even more for truth is exaggerated and fanatic. The history of mankind holds many examples ready, where with the best intentions and under the banner of enlightenment and light (also) bad was installed. Classical (the modern age is just a repetition), but in no case an exception: The time of the French Revolution with its intention to bring good to victory, and their way to the political process and to the guillotine. Robespierre, Danton, but also Rousseau to Napoleon. Or let us remember the end of the Roman Republic with the protagonists Cicero, Pompey, Crassus and the unstoppable rise of Julius Caesar. All this seems a long time ago, but yet is so close.

There is apparently no light without shadows, no single truth without a dictatorship of opinion. I do not value. How much bad is (still) tolerable to help the good to win? Is a Machiavellian view legitimate? The answer is an age-old dilemma. I am only a chronicler. I am conducting an expressive-abstract protocol about our incarnation and awareness raising. There are the many events that just happen and we have no control over. The positive and the pure loses the innocence too quickly. This is a thoughtful undercurrent in the paintings of this series of works. But it is not the focus, it is only a thinking approach (mostly articulated by title or accompanying lyric). It does not detract from the positive overall mood of the series. But for me, the flip side of the coin is always present as a latent danger of exaggeration. This is documented in my high-contrast, intense color palette.

The unsullied pure, the absolutely good remains longing, a goal setting, and at the same time it is an illusion. A tightrope walk. We have to endure this realization.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

INNOCENCE

innocence – blame
birth – life
sea – low tide and high tide
light – shadow
wonder – words
beauty – age
enlightenment – disinterest
eternity – death
freedom – moral
rising – sinking
sun – clouds
purity – everyday life
gods – God, yours, mine, none
truth, the one – truths, yours, mine, none

INNOCENCE – BEING HUMAN

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .