I Wonder If My Ghosts Would Have Known

I Wonder If My Ghosts Would Have Known:

In everyone’s life there are moments when one holds still, as if suddenly being aware and listening to whispers of the past which seem to ask: Is this what you wanted when you set out, when you decided to go along a path which then let you, inexorably, to exactly what and where you are now. Is this what you then dreamed of, what you desired to become?

And I dare say that probably for most of us the answer is no. It certainly is so in my case. I certainly had different plans, different ideas, different concepts even of what life in general and my life should be.

Am I in any way disappointed, in life, in myself, in fate? The answer is a clear and strong: No!

Yes, not everything worked out the way I would have wanted it to. There have been failures, there have been misunderstandings, there have been losses and gains, there have been dramas, there have been grievances, joys, frriendships, encounters, memories. And in the end it all sums up to: There had been a lot to learn on this way. 

And this is the real gain: The gift of learning and understanding.

My life, my art, all it ever was is an endless lesson. It never stopped, not then, not now.

Sometimes I no longer feel like an artist, I even have the feeling that this is a thing of the past. I was never the artist anyway, someone who makes art to make a difference, someone who points out socio-political grievances, for example, an active, socially active member of society. A lot of what I do is nice to look at, it has, in terms of formal aesthetics, a good composition structure, but it has no social relevance, not even an innovative character. I still use the form and colour vocabulary of the last two centuries and only have a rudimentary philosophy about life and what art should and could say about it.

But I enjoy the formal aesthetic, I like the beautiful. It brings structure and a frame into the surrounding chaos, small islands of happiness, often short-lived, often diffuse, flickering.

What brings me comfort is that I have been lucky enough to experience and recognize beautiful things in life, I know what beauty is, I know the Good exists.

I have been given the gift to share a small portion in the wonder of the fundamental fact of artistic creation: The putting in place of something where otherwise there would be nothing. I have not been an artist for many, the transformative effect of my art has not worked for many, sometimes only just for myself. I have been my own artist, my own transformative power. Sometimes that is enough.

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