Epistula I: My First Letter, Laid Bare in Color and Form

Epistula I (36"x48")

I remember the hum of the studio, the scent of paint, and the canvas before me, a blank page awaiting its first word. This piece, "Epistula I," felt less like a painting and more like an act of writing. It's my first letter, not penned with ink, but with the very essence of my being, laid bare in color and form.

When I started, I found myself drawn to the earth tones, the deep oranges and sun-kissed yellows. I applied them with a fervor, feeling a warmth spread across the canvas, like the familiar comfort of old memories or the steady pulse of a quiet hope. This wasn't just color; it was the foundation of a feeling, a deep resonance within me. Then came the cool, muted blues and greens. As I dragged those strokes across the canvas, I often drifted into moments of quiet contemplation, a stillness amidst the internal clamor. They represent those pockets of peace, the breaths I take when the world feels too loud.

The lines, oh, the lines. The thick, dark, assertive strokes on the left—I felt a kind of stubbornness as I pressed them down, a declaration, perhaps even a struggle I was grappling with. And then, the delicate white swirls that dance across the surface, especially in the upper right. I wasn't thinking of anything concrete when I made them; rather, I was tracing the fleeting thoughts that flit through my mind, the whispers of ideas that come and go, never quite solidifying but always present. They are the sighs and dreams, the restless energy of searching.

The fragmented pieces of text, torn and collaged onto the surface—they are literal snippets of the world that infiltrates my thoughts. "Vorsicht" (caution), "der Zielgerade" (the home stretch), "Gemeinderat" (municipal council)... these are not just words; they are echoes of conversations, news, warnings, the mundane and the significant, all vying for attention. As I layered them, I was thinking about how we construct our internal narratives from so many external pieces, how we try to make sense of the scattered information that bombards us daily. They are like fragments of received letters, jumbled and out of context, yet contributing to the overall message.

The rectangular shapes, some filled, some left as open frames, felt like little windows or containers for specific thoughts. The row of open white rectangles towards the bottom right, for instance, they were almost like empty mail slots, waiting to be filled, or perhaps representing the spaces where words fall short, leaving room for feeling. And those small, scattered dots, like punctuation marks or tiny bursts of realization, adding a gentle rhythm to the canvas.

"Epistula I" is my confession, my initial outreach, a raw outpouring of what resides within. It’s not meant to be read in the conventional sense. Instead, each stroke, each color, each textured layer, each fragment of paper is a syllable, a sentence, a paragraph in a language only I truly understand, yet one I yearn to share. It's the beginning of a dialogue, the very first visual message I had to send, to myself and to anyone who feels compelled to listen with their eyes. It’s my heart on display, in its vibrant chaos and its quiet longing.