Mirages - 2009 - Composition of 6 paintings - Acrylics on linen - 160 x 400 cm

Every time at the beginning of my travels and each time when my pencil touches the canvas, it is the start of a new journey of discovery. An adventure, in which I return to my personal feelings of beauty. A return, eventually to myself.

Like the classical hero Odysseus, who returned to his beloved island Ithaka after his journeys...

ITHAKA

As you set out for Ithaka
hope your road is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
angry Poseidon-don't be afraid of them:
you'll never find beings like that on your way
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare excitement
stirs your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
wild Poseidon-you won't encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.


Pray your road is a long one,
that there be many summer mornings when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you enter harbors you're seeing for the first time;
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
exotic perfumes of every kind-
a never ending abundance,
and may you visit many Egyptian cities
to learn and go on learning from their scholars.


Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is your chosen destiny.
But don't hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you're old by the time you reach the island,
enriched by all you've gained on the way,
oblivious of the riche yet to come.
Ithaka inspired this beautiful journey,
Without that island there was no motive.
She had nothing else to offer.


And if you find her poor, Ithaka won't have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you'll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.

K.P.Kavafis
(verzamelde gedichten, Amsterdam, 1994)
Translated by Edmund Keeley & Philip Sherrard

Visitors of this site are pointed out that the depicted works and images are copyright. For usage of the images, other than for consultation through this website, you will require the express permission of the artist as stipulated by international copyright law.