Reaching for the stars

La Palma Observatory

Last May I made a short trip to the beautiful island of La Palma. This green and peaceful pearl in the Atlantic is home to the largest astronomical observatory in Europe. It took our rented Citroën Cactus half a tank of gas in first gear to get to the mountaintop where IAC's huge telescopes are silently witnessing the spectacle of outer space. So one does wonder how they managed to lift all those heavy and sensitive optical high-tech gadgets to the rim of the crater of Roque de los Muchachos.

Getting there, taking in the spectacular panoramas, I felt very satisfied and overwhelmed... It was one of these things on my bucket list: To see a huge astronomical facility on top of a mountain. Ever since early childhood, I've had a clear predilection for all things outer space, so to me this trip felt a bit like coming home. Especially because my 4 year old son was standing next to me, sharing the experience.

Also from early childhood on, all my artistic expressions have had some sort of 'cosmic' or 'outer space' aspect to them. And that is something I am still pursuing...

Especially at a place like that, on a mountain top from where Humanity watches the cosmos, one is reminded of the fundamental oneness or inseparability of all life and phenomena, and the magic of it all... And that is more and more the intentional core message of everything I create through music, painting, photography or what have you...

Let's create a wonderful, peaceful 2017 and carefully observe the infinite!

Dragonfly

Dragonfly, 30 x 30 cm acrylic on canvas © Olivier Hijmans 2016

It has been a little quiet in my blogosphere, as I've been away for a bit. A short journey to the beautiful and peaceful island of La Palma (Canary islands) has deepened my resolve and perspective as an artist. At one point, while taking a swim in a pool there, I was accompanied by an elegant deep red dragonfly of a type I had never seen before. It seemed to follow my movements back and forth the pool, examining me as I was examining it.

Anyway, now I'm back in the blogosphere, and I'm very happy to present to you a work called 'The Dragonfly', that I had mysteriously made shortly before that encounter on La Palma. Very curvy and abstract, it combines and elaborates upon various elements in my previous creations. Aesthetically, I'm trying to find the sweet spots in the realms between smooth and jagged lines, gradients and carefully articulated colors, space and congestion, abstract and figurative, movement and stillness.. and so on. It's all there, and again, it leaves enough room for interpretation.

Still, many people immediately seem to identify an dragonfly in this scene. And once you've seen it, that is what it becomes. Very interesting, because aesthetically there are many parallels between this painting and 'Blue Morpho', which I made three years ago.

I particularly like the idea of a dragonfly being depicted in this work, because like in Blue Morpho, the scene seems to integrate the shape and movement/behaviour of the flying creature into a singular entity. You and how you walk are one and the same, aren't they? The curved wings become the swirling flight path and vice versa...

The dragonfly is incidentally one of my favorite animals. Apart from their obvious beauty and color, I find them very interesting because they are of very sturdy and old evolutionary design. They were among the first winged insects that came into being around 300 million years ago. Also they have amazing flight capabilities.. a great source of inspiration for artists and engineers alike.

It will shortly be for sale on Saatchiart.