Clairvoyant

I rarely talk about how portraits are made, specifically what happens, how I see things while painting a portrait. Partly because it sounds too much like science fiction, even to me at times, but also because it took me a while to understand and observe the process.

There are expressions such as "channeling," "higher self," and "aura" that I perceive so differently from how they are described in "textbooks", that for a while, I couldn't connect them with how I see. I don't see auras, but rather information around people. All this information does not float above in a "bubble," in the "akashic records," but pervades the person, is inside them, on them. Instead of chakras and auras, I see the entire soul's database as a moving film, in frames, as a flowing stream of past, present, and future. I don't fish the information out of the other person's head, but they communicate it and I see it.

The crazy thing is that I suspect everyone senses the information contained in the energy field of others—when two people meet, the soul communicates with the soul in every case—but we are not aware of it because the brain filters out this information. It doesn't filter it out for me.

Attention

Every portrait begins with a meeting, a conversation over tea. At this point, I don't pay close attention to what the person is saying, but I focus on what is "behind" them. I watch the changing images above their head, sometimes symbols, and somehow it all feels natural, just like when locations and images change in a dream. I see their memories as if they were my own, but I am not part of them. I cannot say exactly what happens next. Out of the many images- the one that sticks in my mind will be the starting point of the portrait. This is where every portrait begins.

I don't simply paint the other person's previous lives. They could have been the emperor of China in a previous incarnation, or a military commander in Rome, if their current life has nothing to do with it, it won't be included in the picture.

"The reason I am here"—in one sentence, this is the essence of the images. The portrait only shows the previous life that was left unfinished, which needs to be resolved in the current life, together with the talents, available to the person to do so.

Painting

When I start painting, I take a step back. Perhaps it would be more descriptive to say that I sit on my own shoulder like a parrot and watch what I am doing from there. For me, the basic requirement for painting is unconditionality, complete surrender. Trust.

The picture

I know that the paintings often seem unfinished. In reality, I paint each picture until there is not a single line left to add. The half-finished effect is entirely intentional. If I have painted a detail of a picture too clearly, the part of me that dominates at that stage will "repaint" it. There needs to be an effect that is ambiguous, something like "from here I see a butterfly, from there I see a dragon"—the viewer decides what they see—and that is where the live interaction with the pictures begins. The effect it evokes is radically different for two different people because they don't see the same thing.

Someone once said that I paint pictures as if they were Rorschach tests, and although the comment was meant as a joke, it actually hit the point perfectly.

Handing Over

Portraits truly come to life when the owner of the picture holds it in their hands. They make it real. By the time the portrait is finished, I can tell the whole story about what is in the picture, and everything else.

The effect is often like "having your brains smashed out by a slice of lemon wrapped round a large gold brick" (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy). It makes them cheer up and realize something, confirming something, they had always known about themselves.

To know why we are here and what we are capable of—is a good start to consciously dealing with our destiny.