Beyond Language, Chapter 37 from The Works

"Painting is silent poetry. Poetry is blind painting."— Leonardo da Vinci

In 2024, words entered my paintings once again.

For many years I had been fascinated by Chinese calligraphy. What moved me most was not the meaning of the characters, but their presence. Before they became language, they were movement. Rhythm. Breath. Silence.

I often could not read what was written.

Yet I could feel it.

Slowly I realised that this was also what I wanted my paintings to do.

Not to be read.

But to be experienced.

Together with a Russian friend, I searched for poems that carried hope rather than despair. Every poem we chose had to contain something uplifting. They spoke of beauty, resilience, love, compassion and the quiet strength that allows us to continue.

But I was never interested in illustrating those poems.

Nor did I want viewers to stand in front of a painting and start reading.

I wanted to move beyond language itself.

Russian.

Armenian.

Sanskrit.

Chinese.

English.

Sometimes Dutch.

Different alphabets began to flow through the paintings.

Most people could not read them.

That was precisely the point.

Meaning became secondary.

The letters became line.

The sentences became rhythm.

The poems dissolved into the paint until language itself became image.

Years earlier I had painted the confusion of Babel.

Language had fragmented.

Words had fallen apart.

Now something different happened.

The different languages no longer opposed one another.

They coexisted.

Not because everyone could understand them, but because they no longer needed to.

Each alphabet became another gesture of the brush.

Chinese calligraphy had taught me that writing is more than communication.

It is movement.

Attention.

Presence.

The energy of the brush remains visible long after the words have disappeared.

That insight slowly entered my own work.

The paintings no longer carried a message.

They became places where language could return to its original nature.

Not information.

But experience.

Perhaps every artist eventually arrives at the same question.

What remains when words fall silent?

For me, the answer was never another sentence.

It was the painting itself.