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?

Tunnel

"Tunnel" 40 x 40 cm acrylic on canvas, © Olivier Hijmans 2016

Not something I particularly remember, but I was told that 'tunnel' was the first word I uttered as a child. A very unlikely first word to come from a toddler, but perhaps it was because at that time my parents took us kids on an adventurous trip along the coastline of Norway, crossing through countless tunnels, carved out of countless mountains, revealing new landscapes on every exit. That must have made an impact.

Passing through a tunnel... the speed, the sound, the descent, ascent, the sudden fading and reappearing of light... is a very unique sensation when you think about it. It's like being pulled into a corridor away from an old reality into a new one, no way back, not knowing what is at the other side and then being thrust into that new World, once again out in the 'open', which, interestingly, was my own son's first word.

My son looked at this painting and I asked him what he saw. He replied without hesitation: "a tunnel'.
I agree. To me, it depicts the exciting moment when you're about to exit a long tunnel, the anticipation of seeing the first glimpses of light coming in from a new realm, a new life... winking at the cycle of birth and death.