In 1874, on the occasion of an exhibition by his friend Victor Hartmann, Modest Mussorgsky wrote a splendid work for piano: ‘Pictures at an exhibition'. Commissioned by the then Radio 3 (now Klara) and Canon, Cultural Cell of the Department of Education of the Ministry of the Flemish Community, I was listening to this music when came the inspiration for sixteen charcoal drawings, which in turn formed the starting point for a composition by Martin Valcke for four-handed piano and percussion (also commissioned by the radio).

A project realized in collaboration with Johan van Cauwenberghe.  A never ending dialogue went on while sharing and developing Image and text.  In 1632, Rembrandt was commissioned by the Amsterdam Surgeons' Guild to depict an anatomy lesson by the famous medical prelector Doctor Nicolaas Tulp. It turned out to be one of the most outstanding works of his early period. Setting out from this famous painting, we endeavoured to exemplify the impossibility of grasping reality without destroying it.

This cycle is inspired by Olivier Messiaen’s eponymous musical piece. I became acquainted with this music while Roel Dieltiens and I were working together. He was studying the cello part of the Quattuor. The source of Messiaen's music is to be found in a fragment of the Apocalypse mentioning an Angel, standing with one foot in the sea and one foot on land. This impressive image guided me as did the timbres and musical structures and particularly the emotions that this piece of music arouses.

‘In Illo Tempore?’ is not a story, neither is it a realistic representation. The visual elements, which can be both figurative and abstract, are brought together in a context that can be seen as a force field or as a puzzle rather than as a representation of a concrete space or of a story. The silver thread is the ascending and descending of an image within the image, from print to print, so that an idea of time and a kind of contrapuntal structure arises, in which various references and symbols are interwoven.

The poems Johan van Cauwenberge wrote for the series 'In Illo Tempore', were later published by P. He asked me to take the reverse approach on this occasion and – bearing in mind the previous work process - to relink images to the words. Thus 31 drawings in mixed technique came to be, one for each of the 31 poems. The drawings I made for this series for their part became the occasion for new paintings and graphics. Below one can find a selection.

The idea that we project ourselves into the night sky, that constellations represent our corporality - and at the same time embody our personality. I got that idea from the Orion cycle. We can transplant ourselves into what is bigger than ourselves.

This series of etches and lino's is a contribution to the project Mens-Landschap/ Landschaft-Mensch, (Man-Landscape) an illustrated collection of poems from 2010, published by LiterGra, a non-profit organisation. I worked together with the poet Annmarie Sauer.

Scrawls, sketches and studies sharing an erotic undertone, gathered together under a Koranic denominator. Who are then the virgins of paradise?

The dark room gathering light, messages from the outside world, the sad news of the day, and the comfort offered by music.

Aren’t the boundaries of language also the boundaries of truth? Beyond those lies the domain of the imperceptible, the fantastic. An artist makes that visible while fantasizing and fooling around with creative media. Content and meaning are not always easy to interpret, certainly not as a manner of truth. Then again connections, associations and forms do emerge and they keep coming back, so one may wonder if maybe they belong to our collective spiritual awareness?