shape

I have to start writing about this shape. but writing about it feels like obscuring a thing that is already so present. I will try nonetheless, because it is too precious to slip away, and images slip more easily than words.

the shape came to me in the winter. I drew it, and also its negative. before the hole came the waterfall. the waterfall was a shape that began as one, and dissolves into many. the shape is two sides that come together into one. the dynamic is the same but flows in different directions. in the winter these two forms started to appear and I drew them without thinking more of them, seeing them as benevolent apparitions.

the next time only the shape appeared, three months afterwards. I was walking down a path in the fields I walked everyday, and suddenly I saw this blue U-shape form before me. the shape said: ‘this is emptiness’. I painted it as soon as I came home, and afterwards didn’t want to paint any other thing. I could see the U-shape everywhere, on household items, in nature too. two trees standing next to each other, forming a void between them, are also a U-shape. the void as well as the walls of the shape are both equally important, open to interpretation as is seen fit. when the walls extend to the top of the canvas, the shape seems to have a different meaning than when the walls end in the middle of it. likewise, the walls could be blank and only the void could be filled in, in that case another interpretation arises; of inevitability, of falling, or maybe ascending.

the initial meaning is this: two waterfalls descend into each other, filling everything. or maybe, the initial meaning is this: we reach the same high point twice, but the fall makes the second high point different than the first (something like; we have to destroy in order to build up). or the initial meaning is: the center has to be left empty, the center always is empty. or the initial meaning is: one long exhale. or the initial meaning is: from the same point, two equally valid points, although opposite in expression, emerge. or the initial meaning is: from two equally valid, but opposite points, one shared expression results. or the initial meaning is: a shape formed like an 'U'.

the shape holds a paradox together long enough to be drawn or painted, like two magnets with the same polarity you try to hold next to each other; it wants to repel but stays put by the force of your hands, just for now. maybe that’s why I am so keen on drawing it, on containing it, because its existence is, in essence, impossible.