Tree of Life
About
This painting is composed in three horizontal levels.
The middle part shows a summerly garden view with lilies.
In the center part, a tree grows while casting shadows over the grass. It feels like a filmic scene and radiates restfull intimacy and organic harmony. It symbolizes our earthly nature.
In complete contrast the upper level of the picture looks explosive.
The different colours and spaces stand for the transcendent world and its hyperdimensions. The shining colours are fiery or contrasting warm-cold. The distribution of area is very geometric and the dynamic is hightened by the curves and diagonals.
The tree in the center seems to flow from one level in the next. Continuing and transforming into supernatural realms.
The painting deals with the paradoxality of reality... Spheres of earth and heaven appear to flow into one another, while at the same time show clear boundaries. They are confusingly so, as much interwoven, as they are also differentiated.
The subject of the picture has a biblical background. The book of Genesis tells us about God creating the world and the universe, and how He decided to make mankind and planting for them, male and female, into a garden called Eden. We are furthermore informed that this whole creation was meant to be eternal and eternally governed by peace between all creatures alike.
Subsequently, the bible exemplifies to us how exactly all this harmony was crushed and pushed aside. Because of a historical rebellion man lost his footing as he lost his trust and natural connection with God the Creator, with self and all creation surrounding him. And in this same process the animal and floral world also got distorted and messed up. Earth and mankind alike, they all came under a curse, stripping away its natural fruitfulness and harmonical settings, distorting the nature of life to its deepest core levels.
What happened was, that God had planted two trees in the middle of the garden: one tree was named 'tree of life' while the other was named 'tree of knowledge of good and evil'.
God said to man to eat freely from the first tree because the fruits contained eternal strenghtening, but warned not to eat from the second one, which fruits would bring them death. Therefore God said of this latter tree: no eating of its fruits!
What complicates this situation, then and now, is a fourth player on the scene. About which the Bible illuminates that he is a created angelic person who long before had already become an opposer of God.
And this archangel of light, Lucifer, deliberately choose to become wickedly dark and choose evil. Ever since enjoying his twisted "game" to pervert whatever God made good and is alive.
Like Satan himself, one third of all the hosts of angels were thrown out of heaven because they followed Lucifer in his rebellion against God.
Because of their perverted nature they are called demons.
Satan on earth then strategically mislead Adam and Eve, pushing them to eat from the forbidden tree and that way causing them to get under the boundaries of death through the slavery of sin. It is said, that man through this historic Fall did in fact immediately die in his spirit, because his supernatural resources became amputated and from that time on his true origins became obscured. In respect to his earthly dimensions man's subjection under the strain of sickness and death on a cursed earth did set in much slower.
Then the text of Genesis states that God locked the garden by posting an angel-gard with a fiery sword, also called a 'cherub', at the entrance in the east. Clearly man should not have the chance to eat anyfurther from the tree of life. That way prohibiting the eternal continuation of the cursed life for humans.
Against this biblical background, the painting dwells on this former Tree of Life that once growed in the garden in the region of Eden at the very beginning of earth's creation.
The artists ponders over this lost source of inner freedom and life, as our cursed earthly reality appears so awfully brutal and evil at times.
The artist keeps reminding himself about the age-old promise of God, when He dispelled man and woman from the historic garden of Eden, yet promising them, that one day He would stop this absolute reality of death. God promised that He would send a redeemer, who would take the whole curse unto another tree.
The artist knows and testifies to the truth of the biblical gospel. That Jesus Christ, as the only begotten Son of God in human form, took all of the curse on Himself until his historic bodily death only to then be resurrected and ascended again into the heavens. Thus Bible boldly declares that in the end God will get his rightful way with all of mankind's rebellion, as well as with all creation's suffering.
God is Love. Everyone humbling himself in the side of the one Creator will gain new life and will eat the fruits of the Tree of Life anew in the future and for all eternity.
With this painting the artist dwells in eager expectation, not mislead by the apparent calmness and seemingly self-sufficient state of life, nature or the cosmos. An appearance which, though in some respects deeply illusory, makes it sometimes really hard to actually believe there really is a far greater realm behind our endlessly vast universe. An eternal realm and an indestructible kingdom that surpasses anything we now can behold which our natural eyes or can touch with our hands.
With this in mind, this painterly scene merely looks like totally silent... as with inner eyes any biblical informed audience can perceive something of the dynamism of unseen things, pushing up from deep and from above. Eventually God's Eden will be uncovered and revealed again in a totally rejuvenated fashion. For the time being, its divine mystery keeps unfolding, regardless whether we can yet acknowledge this or not.
About
This painting is composed in three horizontal levels.
The middle part shows a summerly garden view with lilies.
In the center part, a tree grows while casting shadows over the grass. It feels like a filmic scene and radiates restfull intimacy and organic harmony. It symbolizes our earthly nature.
In complete contrast the upper level of the picture looks explosive.
The different colours and spaces stand for the transcendent world and its hyperdimensions. The shining colours are fiery or contrasting warm-cold. The distribution of area is very geometric and the dynamic is hightened by the curves and diagonals.
The tree in the center seems to flow from one level in the next. Continuing and transforming into supernatural realms.
The painting deals with the paradoxality of reality... Spheres of earth and heaven appear to flow into one another, while at the same time show clear boundaries. They are confusingly so, as much interwoven, as they are also differentiated.
The subject of the picture has a biblical background. The book of Genesis tells us about God creating the world and the universe, and how He decided to make mankind and planting for them, male and female, into a garden called Eden. We are furthermore informed that this whole creation was meant to be eternal and eternally governed by peace between all creatures alike.
Subsequently, the bible exemplifies to us how exactly all this harmony was crushed and pushed aside. Because of a historical rebellion man lost his footing as he lost his trust and natural connection with God the Creator, with self and all creation surrounding him. And in this same process the animal and floral world also got distorted and messed up. Earth and mankind alike, they all came under a curse, stripping away its natural fruitfulness and harmonical settings, distorting the nature of life to its deepest core levels.
What happened was, that God had planted two trees in the middle of the garden: one tree was named 'tree of life' while the other was named 'tree of knowledge of good and evil'.
God said to man to eat freely from the first tree because the fruits contained eternal strenghtening, but warned not to eat from the second one, which fruits would bring them death. Therefore God said of this latter tree: no eating of its fruits!
What complicates this situation, then and now, is a fourth player on the scene. About which the Bible illuminates that he is a created angelic person who long before had already become an opposer of God.
And this archangel of light, Lucifer, deliberately choose to become wickedly dark and choose evil. Ever since enjoying his twisted "game" to pervert whatever God made good and is alive.
Like Satan himself, one third of all the hosts of angels were thrown out of heaven because they followed Lucifer in his rebellion against God.
Because of their perverted nature they are called demons.
Satan on earth then strategically mislead Adam and Eve, pushing them to eat from the forbidden tree and that way causing them to get under the boundaries of death through the slavery of sin. It is said, that man through this historic Fall did in fact immediately die in his spirit, because his supernatural resources became amputated and from that time on his true origins became obscured. In respect to his earthly dimensions man's subjection under the strain of sickness and death on a cursed earth did set in much slower.
Then the text of Genesis states that God locked the garden by posting an angel-gard with a fiery sword, also called a 'cherub', at the entrance in the east. Clearly man should not have the chance to eat anyfurther from the tree of life. That way prohibiting the eternal continuation of the cursed life for humans.
Against this biblical background, the painting dwells on this former Tree of Life that once growed in the garden in the region of Eden at the very beginning of earth's creation.
The artists ponders over this lost source of inner freedom and life, as our cursed earthly reality appears so awfully brutal and evil at times.
The artist keeps reminding himself about the age-old promise of God, when He dispelled man and woman from the historic garden of Eden, yet promising them, that one day He would stop this absolute reality of death. God promised that He would send a redeemer, who would take the whole curse unto another tree.
The artist knows and testifies to the truth of the biblical gospel. That Jesus Christ, as the only begotten Son of God in human form, took all of the curse on Himself until his historic bodily death only to then be resurrected and ascended again into the heavens. Thus Bible boldly declares that in the end God will get his rightful way with all of mankind's rebellion, as well as with all creation's suffering.
God is Love. Everyone humbling himself in the side of the one Creator will gain new life and will eat the fruits of the Tree of Life anew in the future and for all eternity.
With this painting the artist dwells in eager expectation, not mislead by the apparent calmness and seemingly self-sufficient state of life, nature or the cosmos. An appearance which, though in some respects deeply illusory, makes it sometimes really hard to actually believe there really is a far greater realm behind our endlessly vast universe. An eternal realm and an indestructible kingdom that surpasses anything we now can behold which our natural eyes or can touch with our hands.
With this in mind, this painterly scene merely looks like totally silent... as with inner eyes any biblical informed audience can perceive something of the dynamism of unseen things, pushing up from deep and from above. Eventually God's Eden will be uncovered and revealed again in a totally rejuvenated fashion. For the time being, its divine mystery keeps unfolding, regardless whether we can yet acknowledge this or not.
Copyright Artborne Erdeborn