I translated this back in October 2007, three years before my first art-related publications. (German into English; via an agency)
“Lichtblicke” – translated as “Enlightened Glimpses”
Extracts (not continuous text)
The inner light that shines out of us is the light of the heart, inner wisdom, intuition, the so-called “inner voice.” It reminds us to use our potential and make the best of ourselves and of our lives. At the same time, fear continually tarnishes the brilliancy of our true being and prevents us from showing our true being to the world. This fear tests our willpower and reminds us of our strength; for only out of the self-esteem that we engender from ourselves is our real light able to shine into the world.
Light is energy and the source of every form of life, for no life can exist without light.
Light enables the discovery of knowledge, provides an insight into the essence of “things,” of people, and does so in the widest variety of colours.
Colours and shapes show us life’s richness – if we perceive them, therefore consciously take them in.
[The artist] focuses resolutely on the parameters of colour and light in the image. Light is the source of every form of life; without light, we people can see no colours. In painting, colour is the image’s voice. Colour has a twofold ability: on the one hand, it is able to stand out as an aesthetic value on its own, but it can also simultaneously function as a mediator of light and dark in the image. This ability that colour has is based on the two characteristics in which colour’s inherent qualities are apparent: on colourfulness and on brightness. Colour is the only means of producing a feeling of space within the image’s confines. Colours can be transformed gradually from dark to bright, thus resulting in a subtle gradation of light. Light guides the eye within the image.
In Rodin we encounter, at the end of the 19th and at the turn of the 20th century, the last great representative of figurative sculpture, the shaper of sculptural human portraits shortly before the beginning of abstraction. Rodin deals intensively with physical representation and movement.
But painting itself is always the result of the receptivity of colour. Colour opens up to the brush, the brush opens up to the hand, the hand opens up to the heart: just as heaven produced all that earth brings forth. Everything comes into being in receiving.