TRUE AT FIRST LIGHT V
150 x 120 x 2 cm
acrylic and oil on canvas
2018

In the last hour of the night
Our intentions are fine
And we believe in world's beauty
Till we betray what we're fighting for
Till all is aflame what we should love
Till first light will wake us up again.

To say it in different, but very true words by Hemingway:
"All things truly wicked start from innocence."

"True At First Light" is the title of the last published novel by the US-American novelist Ernest Hemingway, written until 1954, but first released by the son decades after his death.

FROM SUMMER TO FALL II (study)
2018
120 (w) x 80 (h) x 2 cm
acrylic and oil on canvas

This is a study in a landscape format for a giant painting that I've realized after two very creative and challenging months in summer 2018. Study (and the giant painting) focus on the same message and tell something about the melancholical feelings in late summer when the wind changes and suddenly there are first clouds in our blue sky. We don’t want the summer and sunny light to end but late summer turns to autumn, and the winter is just a question of time. It’s a slow process with countless steps from the light into the dark. The sun already descents but we want to resist, we want to stop the run of the sun, and if it’s only for a little while. But we are no gods. We are not immortal. And hope and love are the answers that help us through darker hours. We smile and kiss and drink and remember Dylan Thomas: we don’t go gentle into that good night. There is no real final, we are just a small part of the circle.

* * *

This painting is also part of the triptych LATE IN SUMMER

OF LOVE AND HOPE AT THE END OF SUMMER (study)
2018
120 (w) x 80 (h) x 2 cm
acrylic and oil on canvas

This is a study in a landscape format for a giant painting that I've realized after two very creative and challenging months in summer 2018. Study (and the giant painting) focus on the same message and tell something about the melancholical feelings in late summer when the wind changes and suddenly there are first clouds in our blue sky. We don’t want the summer and sunny light to end but late summer turns to autumn, and the winter is just a question of time. It’s a slow process with countless steps from the light into the dark. The sun already descents but we want to resist, we want to stop the run of the sun, and if it’s only for a little while. But we are no gods. We are not immortal. And hope and love are the answers that help us through darker hours. We smile and kiss and drink and remember Dylan Thomas: we don’t go gentle into that good night. There is no real final, we are just a small part of the circle.

* * *

This painting is also part of the triptych LATE IN SUMMER

FROM SUMMER TO FALL II (study)
2018
120 (w) x 80 (h) x 2 cm
acrylic and oil on canvas

This is a study in a landscape format for a giant painting that I've realized after two very creative and challenging months in summer 2018. Study (and the giant painting) focus on the same message and tell something about the melancholical feelings in late summer when the wind changes and suddenly there are first clouds in our blue sky. We don’t want the summer and sunny light to end but late summer turns to autumn, and the winter is just a question of time. It’s a slow process with countless steps from the light into the dark. The sun already descents but we want to resist, we want to stop the run of the sun, and if it’s only for a little while. But we are no gods. We are not immortal. And hope and love are the answers that help us through darker hours. We smile and kiss and drink and remember Dylan Thomas: we don’t go gentle into that good night. There is no real final, we are just a small part of the circle.

* * *

This painting is also part of the triptych LATE IN SUMMER.

LATE IN THE SUMMER
triptych 2018
vertical hanging (on top of each other):
120 (w) x 250 (h) x 2 cm
optional horizontal hanging (side by side):
380 (w) x 80 (h) x 2 cm
acrylic and oil on canvas

The three paintings in a landscape format are different studies for a giant painting that I've realized after two very creative and challenging months in summer 2018. All three studies (and the giant painting) focus on the same message and tell something about the melancholical feelings in late summer when the wind changes and suddenly there are first clouds in our blue sky. We don’t want the summer and sunny light to end but late summer turns to autumn, and the winter is just a question of time. It’s a slow process with countless steps from the light into the dark. The sun already descents but we want to resist, we want to stop the run of the sun, and if it’s only for a little while. But we are no gods. We are not immortal. And hope and love are the answers that help us through darker hours. We smile and kiss and drink and remember Dylan Thomas: we don’t go gentle into that good night. There is no real final, we are just a small part of the circle.

* * *
This trilogy contains 3 single paintings, each in acrylic and oil on canvas and each with dimensions of 120 (w) x 80 (h) x 2 cm. The triptych offers two very different hanging possibilities.

DIFFERENT HANGING POSSIBILITIES

(a) vertical hanging on top of each other: beautiful and very creative hanging method if you have enough ceiling height. If so I prefer a hanging distance each of 5 cm between the 3 single paintings.In that case the complete dimension, including the hanging space between the three paintings: 120 (w) x 250 (h) x 2 cm.

(b) horizontal hanging side by side: traditional but also beautiful hanging method of the triptych. If so I prefer a hanging distance each of 10 cm between the 3 single paintings. Complete dimensions of this artwork, including the hanging space between the single paintings: 380 (w) x 80 (h) x 2 cm.

* * *

The triptych combines following studies and should "read" from top to bottom (hanging on top of each other) respectively from left to right (hanging side by side):

"FROM SUMMER TO FALL I (study)"
acrylic and oil on canvas, 2018, 120 (w) x 80 (h) x 2 cm
upper/left part of the triptych

"OF LOVE AND HOPE AT THE END OF SUMMER (study)"
acrylic and oil on canvas, 2018. 120 (w) x 80 (h) x 2 cm
medium/center part of the triptych

"FROM SUMMER TO FALL II (study)"
arylic and oil on canvas, 2018, 120 (w) x 80 (h) x 2 cm
lower/right part of the triptych

* * * *
"The morning had dawned clear and cold, with a crispness that hinted at the end of summer."
~ George R.R. Martin

"…and all at once, summer collapsed into fall."
~ Oscar Wilde

BLOOD WILL HAVE BLOOD III
2018
150 (h) x 120 (w) x 4,5 cm
acrylic and oil on canvas

I often mediate on Shakespeare and his ageless dramatic scenarios. I do love his very poetic but razor-sharp, brilliant psychological consideration of the human being. Remember Macbeth. Striving for power -- political, financial, intellectual, sexual -- ruled, rules and will rule the world. We aren't more than a stone's throw away from former generations and centuries and from Scotland in the summer of 1057 (the death of king Macbeth).

Macbeth to Lady Macbeth:
"It will have blood, they say; blood will have blood."
(Shakespeare: ex Macbeth, act III scene IV)

Colours are especially inspired by the 2015 British-French-American Macbeth film adaption, directed by Justin Kurzel and starring Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard. In Act V Macduff sets Birnham wood on fire and smoke and ashes blowing towards Macbeth's castle. Macbeth dies on the battlefield filmed in impressive orange and red camera shots.

THE LIGHT BETWEEN THE OCEANS II
2018
150 x 120 x 4,5 cm
acrylic and oil on canvas

There is a light between the oceans
That ranges from you to me
It is a light between the oceans
Between today and morrow
And this light between the oceans
It illuminates us our way.

CB/2016

THE GHOST IN YOUR HEART
2018
130 (w) x 130 (h) x 2,5 cm
acrylic, oil, coloured pencil and pastel on canvas

Under a leaden sky
After our summer passed
After the season turned
After all we said and did not become
Hostages - prisoners - lovers - hostiles
Autumnal storms - raging sea - cold moon nights
You and me: museums of fear
Don't forget what we once were.

Queen without a kingdom
In your dark world
When you cry at night
When you don't find sleep in your dreams
I will be
The GHOST in your heart.

King without a queen
In my winter's empire
When I cannot see the light of day
When I face the frozen winds from the North
You will be
The GHOST in my heart.

CB/2018

* * * *

“You must be ready to burn yourself in your own flame; how could you rise anew if you have not first become ashes?”
~ Friedrich Nietzsche

* * * *

This painting is a part of a new FIGURATIVE SERIES that complements the current artistic style of my large sized paintings. About the background of this series: I opened my world of painting and as a painter by drawing and sketching, and from the beginning till this day the figurative element plays a prominent role in my graphical works on paper. The figurative perspective was and still is my basement and the starting point for all of my expressive stylizations and abstractions. But I had the feeling that my drawn figures grow out of the small paper format and that they have something more to say. That’s the reason why I have started a new figurative series and transfer my graphical, figurative projection to the large sized canvas. I want more than just a profane copy of a drawing. It has to be a new challenge and a reorientation in form and content. From time to time I add some lyrical words, a poem or written message and confront these sentences with my figures on the canvas. Harmony or confrontation, everything is possible and it’s an exciting and very intuitive process somewhere between different contemporary painting genres.

* * * *

KRIEMHILD IS DANCING
150 x 120 x 4,5 cm
acrylic and oil on canvas
2018

Kriemhild is a major character of The Song of the Nibelungs, an epic poem based on pre-Christian Germanic heroic motifs, historic events and persons of the 5th and 6th centuries. For more than 13 years Kriemhild seeks revenge for the murder of her beloved husband Siegfried, the dragon slayer and hero, and for the theft of The Treasure of the Nibelungs. Her time comes at the castle of King Etzel of the Huns (Attila). She stages an ambuscade and behaves mercilessly. In a bloodbath of several days' duration she orders the brutal death of the offenders and beheads the gang leaders by her own hand. Kriemhild is German mythos, both in negative and positive tenor, and she left in the German history, also as Gudrun/Gutrune (Old Norse for Kriemhild) in Richard Wagner's "Der Ring der Nibelungen“. The Song of the Nibelungs closes with the sentence: "At the end love bears always suffering.“

* * * *

This painting is a part of a new FIGURATIVE SERIES that complements the current artistic style of my large sized paintings. About the background of this series: I opened my world of painting and as a painter by drawing and sketching, and from the beginning till this day the figurative element plays a prominent role in my graphical works on paper. The figurative perspective was and still is my basement and the starting point for all of my expressive stylizations and abstractions. But I had the feeling that my drawn figures grow out of the small paper format and that they have something more to say. That’s the reason why I have started a new figurative series and transfer my graphical, figurative projection to the large sized canvas. I want more than just a profane copy of a drawing. It has to be a new challenge and a reorientation in form and content. From time to time I add some lyrical words, a poem or written message and confront these sentences with my figures on the canvas. Harmony or confrontation, everything is possible and it’s an exciting and very intuitive process somewhere between different contemporary painting genres.

IN THE QUIET AND PROMISING MORNING
2018
150 (w) x 120 (h) x 4,5 cm
acrylic and oil on canvas

Await my return from the starry sky
In the quiet and promising morning
Watch for me on the mountain
I will search for you until I find you
Through hundred worlds and lifetimes
To the edge of the world and beyond.

CB/2018

* * * *

“One must still have chaos on oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.”
~ Friedrich Nietzsche