Deep Sea Patience

Deep Sea Patience, 50 x 50 cm acrylic on panel, © Olivier Hijmans 2009

"The risk of movement

Colors protect each other

Until that moment"

There was a time when I used to write a Haiku (or pseudo Haiku) with every new painting. This Painting dates back to 2009, a golden oldie indeed.

Titled 'Deep Sea Patience', this work reveals a scene that is both dynamic and tranquil at the same time. It is like a very specific puzzle that might drastically fall apart when one of its individual elements is removed.

Or, more anecdotally, you can imagine a slightly frightened fish in the upper center of the picture, trying to hide behind a colorful coral and other sea creatures. The art of camouflage and natural harmony at the same time. But what if it moves..?

To me, this painting combines a sense of peaceful harmony and colorful danger into one reality.

This painting is not for sale on Saatchiart, I might offer it as print on demand, though.

Climate of Change

Climate of Change, 30 x 30 cm acrylic on canvas, © Olivier Hijmans 2015

A snapshot of an ever changing landscape, moving from desert to forest, from warm to cold.. Like many of my landscapes, this panorama shows multiple horizons, being less linear than it appears at first glance.. just as the human mind itself and our perceptions..

You can see the swirls of weather shaping the surroundings. The distant sun has witnessed many changing climates come and go, persistently carving and polishing the never finished sculpture called Earth..

I painted this in December 2015, now giving it the long awaited release it deserves...
For sale on Saatchi Art.

Kite at Eagle Peak

Kite at Eagle Peak, 30 x 30 cm acrylic on canvas, © Olivier Hijmans 2015

Mountains always have my attention. Is it their solidity? Their overwhelming appearance? The way they play with light? Their vistas? Probably all of the above.

Kite at Eagle peak is a painting I made in 2015. It is now for sale on Saatchiart.

Eagle Peak is the mountain top where the Buddha is said to have expounded his teaching called the Lotus Sutra. This is regarded his most important teaching, in which he declares all life to be inherently endowed with the highest potential for wisdom, compassion, courage, happiness and fortune.. no ordinary message indeed.

So I used this single fluttering kite as a symbol for this state of absolute spiritual freedom, as it playfully dances around this serene mountain top. The moon is there to witness the show.

Mont Sainte Victoire

"Mont Sainte Victoire" 30 x 30 cm acrylic on canvas © Olivier Hijmans, 2015

Cézanne's famous series about Mont Sainte Victoire has been a great inspiration for me. Having attended many Buddhist summer courses over the years near the village of Trets, overlooking this beautiful mountain, I have formed a deep connection with this area. The specific herbal scent, the dry summer heat, the sounds from the valley, the ever changing color and lighting of the mountain... It really is a very special place. Cézanne knew that, and I also experienced it very much.

Though the mountains in this painting are not quite the shape of the actual Mt Sainte Victoire, this scene is an expression of the area and everything I experienced there, as projected from my heart and observation.

For sale on Saatchiart.com 

Energy

"Energy" 30 x 30 cm acrylic on canvas, © Olivier Hijmans 2016

 

There are those days when, suddenly, a lightbulb ignites over your head, bathing you and your tired face in the refreshing light of a great new idea. Like, for example, the day I realized I should integrate my music studio with my painting studio, which had been in two separate and slightly impossible places.

It is the pure energy of creativity that lights the bulb of ideas. Like the Buddhist teacher Nichiren Daishonin said: "..a candle can light up a place that has been dark for billions of years."

New ideas are always already there, in a latent state of potentiality, stored non locally in the cosmos. We just need to resonate with them and light the bulb so we can see them... right?

Departure

"Departure" 30x30 cm acrylic on canvas © Olivier Hijmans, 2015

Time to reflect on a painting I made last year. One of my personal favorites, actually. It may look as sad as it looks playful. There is a clear interaction between light and darkness here... there is a sense of emergence and disappearing, hope and fear, perhaps, or loss and gain... Sometimes in life, the curtain just opens to a new phase, which inevitably entails a drama of welcoming new developments and parting with current situations, tendencies, or relationships. Through our tears, we see the first blurry glimpses of a new reality.

From a deeper perspective, it is this "cycle of birth and death" of life phenomena that reinforces our vitality and refreshes our perspective. The trick is not to be afraid of the shadowy figure standing in the distance when the curtain opens, and to have the courage and seeking spirit to enter a new paradigm.

My personal conviction is that from time to time one does need to fundamentally question one's World view, and therefore also reconsider the anatomy of one's inner World as well. Even the hardest rocks on Earth were completely morphed and moulded by the immense forces of the elements, time and transformation. Likewise the thickest of walls in life can be broken through by the power of determination, courage and wisdom.

Are you prepared to see what's on the other side?

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.

Reach Out

Reach Out, 60x60 cm acrylic on canvas © Olivier Hijmans, 2016

I do enjoy painting wide landscapes and horizons. In the early days, it was hard to believe or understand that another land might exist beyond the horizon. But we had a strong sense that there would be something there, though we had no idea what those lands would look like and who their inhabitants were. Ships sailing to the edge were destined to fall off of the face of the Earth, many feared.. a now very illogical scenario to us of course, freely flying around the globe and across the continents.

Still, I imagine we cherish the same perspective when gazing at galactic horizons in outer space.. Some of us do have a hunch that ET civilizations might exist, and some believe we have been visited by some of them. Yet many will claim our ships, or theirs, would never be able to break through the light-speed barrier, let alone safely cover any intergalactic distance..

This I find to be a very fascinating paradigm. Are there other Worlds out there? Will we ever be able to reach out to them? And when we do, who and what will we find? Our interaction with an ET civilization would most likely not be very linear. It would probably be mind bending, uncomfortable, exiting, and deeply transformative to both. Their World may somewhat resemble ours, or it might be a completely upside down experience to us. Even the most deserted desert might contain a hidden wealth of life, and the cosmos might turn out to be teeming with life, like a fresh green forest in spring. Maybe one day our Blue Marble will be their Blue Marble and vice versa. Fundamentally and playfully engaging in the struggle to reach out to each other, all connected in the eternally flowing river of existence...

For sale on Saatchiart.