Alpha Imagination

The title translates as “Europe from the Ashes”. It was also the title of my first symphony, performed in 1993 with the Brussels Symphony Orchestra. We are still hoping to record the symphony in full soon. This painting is intended to become its cover image.

Father Time watches over the slowly turning wheel of the seasons and the eternal cycles of living and dying. He represents the concept of change, and his appearance transforms with the year. In spring, he begins as a newborn child, reborn with the first rays of the sun as the snow melts. In high summer, he reaches midlife. In autumn, he enters old age. In winter, he leaves this cycle and sleeps through the transition under a deep blanket of snow.

A white ray of light reveals all the colours of the rainbow when it travels through the prism of a crystal. Each photon is a messenger of love, a witness to the soul of the universe, and one of creation’s chief agents. God is Light. Light is the engine of creation. We are beings of light, destined to do good, destined to be at one with the positive force of Creation.

I believe that the universe we live in is an endless field of all-pervading, interconnected consciousness. As human beings, we are active participants in this universal game of creation. The universe is holographic by nature: all parts interact directly with all others, and this is instant. The universal mind is strangely equipped to know everything. Yet, as creatures living in the physical dimension we call Earth, our powers of vision remain extremely limited by our still relatively low level of development as a potential interplanetary species. Our minds are geared to see and understand only what we can mentally process and digest. And that is a good thing.

Here, I painted a gigantic Third Eye of the Universe. It is the eye of the soul of the cosmos, multidimensional in nature, able to see all there is, all that has been and all that will be – past, present and future.

This painting depicts an end-of-the-world scenario. Our mother planet Earth has already witnessed many cosmic catastrophes in its long and chequered history. According to current knowledge, there have been five major mass-extinction events, the most recent being the demise of the dinosaurs about sixty million years ago. That event was caused by a gigantic comet or other celestial body that struck the Earth in Yucatán and plunged the planet into darkness for years. Most land animals perished. The picture also reminds one of Plato’s story of Atlantis: a high civilisation wiped out by a cataclysmic flood around ten thousand years ago.

We now stand on the threshold of a new mass extinction, but this one is entirely man-made. Since the dawn of the industrial age, we have polluted and ravaged the blue planet. Pollution has caused climate change on a massive scale, and we still face the spectre of potential atomic annihilation as a species. Our combined level of selfish ignorance knows no bounds. Unless we manage to mend our ways, the image above may one day come true.

This painting was never finished and, unfortunately, no longer exists in its original form. Only an old photograph remains. The unfortunate truth is that I experimented with the background and some of the facial features and ultimately damaged the painting beyond repair. This can happen if one is not careful, and I often paint very fast, in the heat of emotion. I recently painted the same composition again, this time with a different face of Jesus and several other altered features. The second version turned out reasonably well and is still unfinished, although I did not quite manage to recapture the power of the first original. Perhaps one day I will gather the courage to try to repair or rescue the original.

I love all animals, but cats of every kind hold a particular fascination for me. As an archetype, it does not get much more powerful than the lion. In this painting, the lion soars into space against the backdrop of the sun and an eclipse: two opposite states of the same phenomenon. Just as we must traverse and exist between the extremes of light and darkness, we are creatures made of opposites. These two aspects – the light and its absence, the dark – exist within us as well, and it is up to us to negotiate the torrents created by these opposing energies and strive for harmony.

In Christian tradition, the Lion of Judah represents Jesus Christ. In the Book of Revelation, the symbol appears directly in the vision of the heavenly throne room. In Christian iconography, this symbol is paired with the Lamb of God. While the Lamb represents Christ’s sacrifice, humility and submission, the Lion of Judah represents His ultimate power, resurrection, royalty and triumphant return.

The ship represents our life’s journey through the many ups and downs of our individual destiny. For those, who seek enlightenment, life is a mighty challenge. The cosmic eye in the background represents our own mind’s eye, our transmitter of earthly intelligence. The multi coloured ocean represents our subconscious with all the powerful and often conflicting emotions. Our rational mind often struggles to make sense of it all – and this is the challenge we all face: achieving harmony between our rational mind which is seeking to understand things through sober and analytical reasoning on one hand – and our emotions which are often dancing to an entirely different tune. He who masters this tightrope dance and achieves unity and equanimity in himself is on the road to enlightenment.