Some reflections about my work as a landscape painter
Art and religion. The horizon is a place of insight. On the horizon heaven and earth are meeting. The horizon is a border and borders are places with possibilities. New things can happen. Old thoughts can be renewed. The horizon shows you where you’re coming from and where you’re going to. The horizon gives you the feeling of space and time – it is the start of an orientation, a perspective on life. Your life.
In the landscape is the border not only point of orientation, he is also the place where you will be in future. The horizon moves, you never get there. That’s important. You are always going on. The border is your perspective.
I believe that there is a poetical truth next to other kinds of truth. In my painting this poetical truth is the most important one. A poem with his layers en dimensions reveals something of the presence of the transcendental reality. In the landscape this transcendence can be discovered. It is not only in the light or the shape of the landscape. Maybe it is a feeling, a thought, some kind of meaning you put in. The landscape can carry you, the meaning comes always afterwards. Your perspective on the landscape is product of your behaviour and your vision.
The message carries the messenger. The scientific believes carries the scientist, the gospel the evangelist. That means that the message is more important. It structures our way of life, our vision on living. It is like a road in the landscape. It is maybe a way to follow or to leave. You never know where this road is going to. Only by following it, you will discover. The same with freedom, there is no way to freedom, freedom is the way. It is the same with love. The same with God and your own believe in the possibilities of a transcendental reality.
In my work I’m not looking for answers. Questions are more important. Painting is a quest, a search, following intuitive expressions. Krishnamurti already said: truth is a landscape with no trails. Therefore I’m going after the questions, and new answers create new questions. I’m quite comfortable with it, because it is like life. The spirit of God needs new words, human words, so that language can inspire. Every time again and again, new people, new words, old events, new meaning. You’re in this process, a never ending story.
To be religious means to be connected. You’re part of it. Religious art connects. It links heaven and earth, human kind and the transcendental. Religious arts points out, it searches beauty, spirit, balance, the deeper layers of life. It is a way to discover and perceive reality in a broader sense. And it can carry you like the landscape carries the people who walk in it.
John Hacking 2007
Meer afbeeldingen van mijn werk: Saatchi – Behance
betekenisgeving & levenshorizon 