I tune my antenna
On a vivid-white blanket, I draw seemingly random, meandering lines from a single point with a pitch-black graphite marker. This activity reminds me of my youth, when I used to make similar drawings on the backs of my father’s outdated invoices, in which I could often recognize faces afterwards. This will be my tunic for my free stage act tonight at the men’s festival.
I spread those lines out over the entire surface, and with great attention and awareness, I paint them over in hues of green that closely matches the festival logo. A man comes to stand next to me and observes me. He tells me I’m creating ‘vedic art‘. Since receiving my spiritual name, I’ve developed antennas that sharpen my attention whenever I hear or read a word containing the root ‘ved‘.
"Why leave prison without paying"
Waiting to be painted
I have never heard of this paint style. I discover the website of the Belgian Federation of Vedic Art. Without hesitation, and without knowing exactly what is attending me, I sign up for a beginners’ course. I turn out to be the only student. It is my first one-on-one relationship with a teacher. It feels awkward but a connection quickly develops. Just like me she has a strong affinity for kundalini yoga.
The training is oral and practical, with the principles of vedic art briefly explained one by one, using minimal theory. Wahe Guru, I can immediately start practicing. My canvas is a meters-long blanket that I collected from my mother. I feel it had been waiting at the bottom of a cupboard for decades. Waiting to be painted.
"Who loves the front row"
I am having fun until ...
For each exercise, I place a different section of that immense blanket on a flat table and start painting. I bought only the primary colors which I mix with white and black paint, using a little or a lot of water, to achieve the desired hue and saturation. I am having fun until, on a certain training day, I don’t feel my energy flowing. I have no idea what to paint next.
Frustrated I start mixing the paint with my fingertips, then let my painted fingers intuitively compose dots of different colors on and over each other on the blanket. At one point, I look from a distance at the resulting chaos and see a hot air balloon. I add a stylized basket with a few additional dots representing people. What a wondrous experience to be able to create a new painting from scratch without a plan.
What a wondrous experience to create from scratch without a plan
The experience of painting over
Towards the end of the training, the idea matures to connect all the separate exercises on my mum’s awakening blanket into one large work piece that symbolizes this beginners’ course. As a first step, I once again return to filling the empty spaces with the winding lines from my youth, forming a closed figure with many protrusions, which I then paint in flowing transitions. To further achieve balance in the work, I paint sections over that I sense don’t belong there.
This initially provokes a lot of resistance. What I once painted must remain visible, my perfectionist ego believes. Everything you do has to be right the first time, isn’t it? My teacher peacefully and patiently coaches me to let go of what no longer serves. I discover that vedic art contributes to my personal growth process. The resistance subsides. It begins to feel like a meditation, a creative way to connect with my true self.
I develop my own style
After the training, I continue painting and I love it. I still start every work piece with apparently random black lines evolving into flamboyant worlds of odd shapes, mystic figures, and fictional creatures that sometimes only come to life when turned the work piece upside down. It’s often a calming way to end a day. I now notice lines everywhere: on front doors, in furniture and fixtures, in logos. Literally everywhere and I let them inspire me.
Sometimes I want to partially re-expose parts I’ve painted over earlier by scraping dried paint off my work with a knife. Or I wipe away some of the paint with a paper towel before it dries. And I paint on surfaces I find somewhere along the way: a large lost plastic bag from a supermarket chain, an abandoned frisbee, a black piece of fabric. I develop my own style with techniques I’m teaching myself.
"When swan Lee meets wee Swan"
Even stars collide
I recently moved, and that way I rediscover a dusted photo collage from my ‘2012 transit of Venus‘-trip on the Greek island of Kos, which I had then printed on a large canvas. It’s perfect for my next experiment. I paint over the photo with colors as close as possible to the original, but more blurry. But this leads nowhere.
Frustrated once again, I dip my fingers in a lot of paint and start sculpting circular lines around the two images of the sun on the collage. It looks like two stars colliding and reminds me to the last verse of Charlie Chaplin’s famous 70th birthday poem. With a white marker, I draw straight lines over it, as if viewing the scene through a stained-glass window whose glass has disappeared. I finish this work piece off by gluing a tin can lid, a piece of a toy, and some pebbles I find along the roadside while taking a break.
"Even stars collide, and out of their crashing, new worlds are born"
— Charlie Chaplin
A final touch
This painting deserves a name. And retroactively, all the work pieces I have created before. Magritte and his friends met to invent meaningless names for his artworks. I adopt that interesting principle. Which means that nobody can really understand the title of my paintings, but it brings me back to the joy and feeling I have about it. When the title is right and the work feels finished, I sign with a calligraphic ‘ved‘ in Gurmukhi.
My paintings are starting to pile up. What will be their destiny? Some time ago, I attended an artist panel discussion and the moderator asked that same question. A participant replied that he throws them away at the recycling point when he is out of space and couldn’t sell them. I was bewildered. But now I have more connection with that perspective. One evening I leave a painting at the waterfall near Wargnies-le-petit in France while walking the GR122. I donate another one to the owner of the camp space in Le Quesnoy where I can park my camper for free for the whole weekend. Maybe I’ll also draw inspiration from the habit of the late Syd Barrett, and burn them as ultimate act of non-attachment.
"Where frogs never brush their teeth"
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Tour de France 2023
