A Rivers Journey
& the tale of an obvious path

A river's path ruthlessly reveals the obvious. It seeks the fastest way downwards. Despite following this brutally rigid and deterministic logic, the river happens to casually make everything flourish with life along its way, creating some of the most profound, bio-diverse habitats on the face of our earth.

Shortly after my daughter was born I started this series of paintings called ‘A Rivers Journey’. It marked a very difficult, yet rewarding point in my life as I was throwing away old habits and beliefs about what's allowed and what isn't allowed with digital painting. Considering that I had to feed my family with this craft, it drastically amplified the intensity of my journey toward finding artistic self-expression. Yes, I’ll share the juicy bits and failures in this essay, so you don’t have to repeat them.

The Mountain
And how I faced it

As a perfectionist who often had his head in the clouds, becoming a father melted many of my flakey, romantic ideas of parenthood. It quickly turned the high clouds into a slapping rain of humbling realizations. Now I'm quite certain that nothing could have really prepared me for that journey. The intensity of the love, the work, the worrying. And most importantly the shift of interests!

With my new set of ambitions, I felt a deep call to create and share more meaningful work. Given the current state of the internet, it has become increasingly challenging for artists to showcase long-form content and share thoughts about their process. But hey, It took only seven years and a monumental amount of work to build our own safe space for extended attention spans. I can happily announce that these paintings found their new home on konduktum. A platform that deeply aligns with their essence.

This has been possible thanks to the incredible work of @CanRau who has implemented a brand new text editor with @konduktum's latest update. Allowing a nonsense-free and focused writing experience. I still can't believe using it right now. What a delight.

‘The Mountain’ painting marks the beginning of the series. It’s weirdly intimate, as these paintings are from 2016 and have been scattered across various social media platforms, existing separately from one another.

The Gap
Between the teacher and the teaching

Time went by, my daughter started walking and I was soon called to figure out new income streams next to my freelance work. I decided to explore the so-called e-learning cosmos. I still cringe a little, thinking about the decision, as I wouldn’t really do ‘art’ during that time, but solely sell technical knowledge.

I used to say: In a classroom, the person who learns the most is always the teacher. For me, even the process of creating a class forced me to consolidate all my scattered thoughts. Where all the little creeks of reasoning flow into one large coherent stream of understanding. A stream that has enough current to burst every dam of ignorance.

So if students ask me how to learn faster, I'd tell them to teach people what they have learned. If teachers want to learn faster, I'd tell them to teach students how to become good teachers.

After launching two digital painting classes, I initially felt proud of them. However, I soon realized that I hadn't been able to convey the depth that I originally wanted to share. While the classes still offer significant technical value for beginners, they rarely address the underlying thinking and motivations behind creating art, which I consider equally important.

Eventually, I took a complete turn and focused solely on my YouTube videos that follow an entirely philosophical approach, moving away from any instructive format. Still, I was sensing a large soaring gap between the philosophical videos and the more technical classes.

The Cave
And getting out of it

The gap between my authentic self-expression and the technical online classes grew larger. And it made sure to bother me on a daily basis, leaving me with the constant feeling that I missed sharing something important.

It’s not like I was obsessively searching for the perfect teaching method, I just wanted to take the viewer on the same journey that I went through while painting. I ended up locking myself in an intellectual cave of silly “methods”. Until one day I was outside enjoying some plein-air painting, realizing that the only way to share an authentic painting experience is by doing exactly that: Painting.

Letting go of the romantic lie that people can experience the beauty of the actual painting process through the screen liberated me from my nonexistent YouTube career and the e-learning bubble. I was a student again.

Teaching art is like teaching yoga. You sound very smart while you’re actually just reminding people of how smart they were as a child.

The whole realization drastically changed my own approach to learning new things. I started spending much more time outside, painting with friends, hosting retreats, and doing pottery. Basically, everything that involved the actual non-theoretical physical process - as it happened to be the only thing that actually fills this infamous gap. Just like water.

The Ground
And how not to lose it

More years went by, my daughter was sitting next to me as I was on the pottery wheel throwing pots. She started forming little clay pots with her hands after asking me how I’d do them without a wheel. She was so happy, despite the limited technique I showed her. In fact, she was far more content with her works than I was with the pots that I threw on the expensive Shimpo pottery wheel.

My self-critique let me hit a rocky ground again. Being down there, I took the chance to examine some inevitable truths. Accepting that technique is quite neutral, and does not define ‘quality’ at all.

As dry, and deterministic as it might sound at first: Technically, there is no magic in the process of painting, as the outcome is purely determined by what you’re able to perceive and what you’re able to articulate. A painting digests reality. That’s it. Things from reality get simplified in the painting and others are made more complex in it. All within the confines of what you’re able to observe. And within the limits of what you're technically able to communicate. Even when you draw something abstract using your feet, eyes closed standing on one hand. It’s still a technique, with its own limits.

I stay away from saying there is a “good” or a “bad” technique. There’s just a room within which you can express yourself. The technique is the size of the room and its limit, at the same time. It’s a vessel. Some people are extremely happy with a canoe, others are still not satisfied with their yacht. It’s us, who project our emotions, opinions, and irrational judgments onto the technique.

If you want to cross the river, you‘d save money for a canoe. If you choose to cross the seas you’d save funds for a yacht. For every ambition there’s a technique, and painting is no exception. It can save so much time and frustration to understand this in the early stages of learning. Saving money equals practicing a technique in this example.

Yes, I know there have been people who crossed the ocean in a canoe, let’s not be smart. If you find airbrushing hyperrealistic Harley-Davidsons on a three-meter-wide canvas rewarding, then go for it! I’d just stick to a photo camera in that case.

But everything is not lost, I find there is a quite magical component to all this. ‘Magic’ happens within someone who sees your painting. Within milliseconds they ’unzip’ your painting and try to fit it into their concept of reality, where it sparks different memories and triggers aspects of their self. Sadly, It is something that only they will experience - unless, they are willing to share what looking at your picture made with them.

Paintings made by a child can hit quite hard. No matter how trashy their technique: Using the image as a solid bridge between your and their inner state, makes you cherish every line.

Hence looking at art with a close friend can be a surprisingly intimate and vulnerable experience as the painting provides a common ground. It becomes a very concrete and precise reference point in our shared ’reality’ always knowing what the other person feels can be brought home to the artwork.

The Valley
A tale of patience and the Ocean

It’s 7:34 in the morning, we’re late, the rain is pouring, and I’m on the cargo bike driving my daughter to school. ”No, I won’t put on my jacket unless we eat ice cream later” she shouts in a fury, demonstrating her newly achieved bargain-torture skills. Three simultaneous freelance projects and a starving bank account are piling up in my mind while I’m trying to navigate Frankfurt's frantic traffic. I want to dissolve under the heavy current of thoughts streaming through me. But, dissolve into what? Right there, in that moment, the image of a large blue ocean floods into my memory. “I just need a vacation” I’m saying to myself, trying to play down the intensity of the memory. Unable to belittle the masses of water, I give in. I dissolve.

A deep calm enters my body, I sense the rain on my skin. No more thoughts. Just a vast, silent space. I hear the school bell ringing. My daughter senses that I’m calm and her tantrum subsides. ”See you later Dad” After a gentle peck on my cheek, she walks into the classroom.

I’m standing in the rain, with the image of the ocean still glowing in the back of my being. Now I understand. I feel like I can cover any distance. Reaching a very low point in life isn’t that scary anymore, knowing that after the valley, there comes the ocean.

Gosh, it sounds like the corny tale of an old sailor's withdrawal symptoms, but here is my take on the wisdom of water:

Following all of our thoughts downstream, they eventually culminate in a large river that makes up our personality. That personality, as solid as it might seem is destined to dissolve in a giant delta, to become one with the ocean again.

This process of dying has liberated me so many times in my everyday life, over and over again. It saved me from becoming a stinky swamp, stuck in any of the dogmatic, religious, scientific, spiritual, technocratic, or artistic valleys that society offers us.

Patiently collecting all of my thoughts, one by one, one at a time, seemed impossible seven years ago. The more thoughts I gather, the bigger the stream gets, the higher the current, and the higher the chance that I will reach the ocean. If only I’m patient enough, to go all the way. Not half the way. But all of it. Trusting, the ocean will come! Equally patient, it waits for me to return home, becoming complete, ever flowing, by dying, dissolving, into the all. Over and over, and over again, infinitely, like the river.

We ate ice cream after school.