Unio Mystica, 1990, Chapter 6 from The Works

Around 1990, my work began to change fundamentally.

Until then, I had mainly been occupied with image, atmosphere, composition and space. But during travels through Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia, another layer slowly opened. The paintings became less about representation and more about inner movement.

During this journey I stayed for ten days at the Buddhist monastery Suan Mokh in southern Thailand, under the teachings of Buddhadasa Bhikkhu.

For ten days we lived almost entirely in silence. Meditation began before sunrise and continued until evening. No conversations. No distractions. Only breathing, observation and attention.

What struck me most was not the silence itself, but a completely different way of understanding reality.

In the West we are deeply shaped by opposites:good and bad, success and failure, gain and loss, joy and sorrow. We constantly move between attraction and resistance,trying to hold on to one side while escaping the other.

At Suan Mokh I encountered another possibility:not choosing between opposites,not becoming trapped between them, but learning to move beyond them.

Buddhadasa Bhikkhu spoke about the confusion created by “the pairs” : the plus and the minus,the constant swing of desire and fear.

That insight entered the paintings almost immediately.

Forms began to merge,dissolve,intertwine.

Bodies became landscapes.Fragments searched for reunion.What was separated tried to become whole again.

At the same time I became fascinated by the myth told by Aristophanes in Plato’s Symposium: the ancient idea that human beings were once whole,before being divided into separate halves forever searching for reunion.

The paintings of Unio Mystica emerged from this atmosphere: not as illustrations of philosophy,but as traces of an inner transformation. Again and again the same realization returned:

we never see the whole. We only see fragments.

And yet there are momentsin which the fragment briefly becomes transparent and something larger can be felt moving through it.

During that period I often thought about an old Taoist story.

A farmer’s horse ran away.

The villagers said:“What terrible luck.”

The farmer replied:“Maybe.”

A week later the horse returned,bringing fifteen wild horses with it.

“What great luck,” said the villagers.

“Maybe,” said the farmer.

Later the farmer’s son broke both his legs trying to tame one of the horses.

“What terrible luck.”

“Maybe", said the farmer.

Soon after, war broke out.

All the young men were taken away to fight, except the farmer’s son.

Again the villagers came:“What great luck.”

And again the farmer answered:“Maybe.”

No one sees the whole. We only see fragments.

Looking back now, I recognize that Unio Mystica was not only a series of paintings.

It marked a shift in perception.

The work was no longer searching merely for image, but for a center behind fragmentation, a still point beneath movement,where opposites could exist without cancelling each other out.

Not a solution.

Not certainty.

But a different position from which to look.