For over 3 months I had been publishing the 106 pictures I did from 1981 to 1990, about one picture a day. I restored them from photos, since the originals had nearly all been dissolved in 1997. Artefacts of the scans had to be removed, the faded greyish colours of the photos revived and some other little mistakes corrected. Now they look fine, as good as as possible.
I wrote comments for each picture, explaining the symbolism of the painting and sometimes also in which situation it was created. For me the editing was quite an adventure. Many inner pictures rose up, I again saw situations like through a telescope. And with this long distance I could much better put into words what I had expressed 25 to 30 years ago.
I sometimes hesitated before publishing certain images, they still were very close to me, and to unclose them by publishing was like opening inner windows into parts of my life hitherto hidden. The presentations in Flickr and in Facebook reminded me of an Advent calendar with many little doors into subtle worlds.
It was also very nice to see the “likes” in Facebook that “friends” took notice of the pictures; some were regular visitors or gave comments, which was very encouraging. Thank you, also for the mails. A quote from one of the mails a friend from California wrote me: “I tell students we must praise and appreciate everyone’s gifts (which helps everyone evolve) and we must bring forth our gifts into the Light. It takes courage and it takes Love to do this.” And: “Your paintings are an expression of deepest Love & revelation. This is not given as a compliment. Your essence is in the paintings. Thank you for showing them to the world.”
The story of these paintings has now been told and they are “set free to sail to distant horizons”. I think I will soon begin to tell also the story of the new paintings which started in 2009 and reveal a bit of the backgrounds. It is still an ongoing story.
Part of the “Flickr Advent Calendar” with the Early Paintings.
