Tomorrow night is a New Year evening and it is a great time for some retrospective general account of what happened in 2015.
I think that without exaggerating much, it was an amazing year marking a very dramatic turning point in my life and I believe in my art as well.
The summer of 2014 was a culminating point for my decision to sell my apartment in Tel Aviv and move to live in Budapest. Since it is a general bird view account, I will not enter into the specific details of all the reasons for making such a drastic decision.
Perhaps mentioning just a few will be enough to give some background and perspective.
Feeling fed up with living in a region with constant high level of violence and wars was one.
The idea of having to put up with an endless cycles of aggression coming from one side with a following retribution from another side has reached it’s limit in innermost being.Standing in front of my easel in my studio in Tel Aviv , trying to concentrate on making art while the sirens warning of a missile attack coming from the south, leaving only few minutes to run for shelter, broke trough my denials related to the need for the constant sacrifice demanded by living in such a place.
Once the denials have come up to the surface it become clearer that along with the constant violence there comes a heavy price tag based on constant reliance on the fight and flight mechanism of the reptilian brain. The constant concern about the need for security in the region ridden with violence, do not leave much place for activating the more humane portion of the limbic brain that is needed for cultivating imagination, inspiration and all other requirements for making art that comes from inner peace of mind.
Moving away from Middle East, I have embarked on a few months of exploration of an alternative place, finding myself in the beautiful region of lake Como in northern Italy, sketching outdoors , soaking my eyes in the majestic beauty of the mountains with all the little lovely villages spread around the lake like little gems, with endless vistas for great compositions.
departing from Bellagio to Varenna on Lake Como.
BellagioAfter spending some time in the beautiful village of Varenna, I have realised that it was too touristic for me as place to spend the rest of my life and decided to move on with my search for that place that is sitting on a historic power point, allowing convergence of natural beauty with rich cultural life . With all due respect for picturesque little villages such as Varenna, they usually luck the depth of a bustling centre with rich cultural life with enough chaos to allow for fermentation of art that is more then depicting natural beauty.
The fact that I have found such convergence in Budapest was due to combination of pure luck with a dash of Divine Providence.
I make a distinction between the two even though they might seem to be the same .
In my opinion, we encounter luck when we able to cultivate an attitude of courtship towards Divine Providence.
As an artist I believe that it is not much different from an attitude of a constant openness for the appearance of the Muse.
Inspiration comes when we keep ourselves on alert for the magic in everyday life.
When life is a flow of little moments of wonder and gratitude for the what seems to be the obvious but with a deeper introspection are filled with grandeur and awe.
My meeting with Eva was a moment of magic that has determined the direction of the flow to the region of my birth place and early childhood.
In spite of the fact that I was born on the border of Hungary in the Carpathian region of west Ukraine and the fact that my childhood years were influenced very much by the Hungarian culture, Budapest was not an obvious choice from the beginning if my journey.
It was only after I met Eva that it became clear that everything what I was looking for in a place to live could be found in a place like Budapest. Amazing natural beauty, rich cultural life, deep historical roots and people with natural warmth who’s language I could understand because of my own heritage and childhood roots.
With Judit’s appearance in my life, the obviousness of the choice of Budapest has become very clear in spite of the fact that no place on Earth today can offer everything and no place is perfect.
We live in times of great turmoil and constant strife that comes with the transitioning from the dying World order with obsolete ideas of control into a New Era of dynamic equilibrium required to balance the new principles of sustainability with an opening towards a new vision of Earth as a living Gaia full of magic and love.
With the excitement of finding my true mate,and what seems like my true place,it was time to take care of some personal health issues that required my opening to the fragility of life and the need to balance the great changes and find a pace of living that is much calmer and restful .
At the same time the exciting journey of exploration focusing on the new patterns of life have opened new possibilities that have started to appear in my art with a better flow of creativity that comes when inspiration meets right time with right place.
I am still in a process of transition and there are many old patterns that are still hard to get rid of, especially those that are connected to the deep seated fears connected to the flight and fight reptilian brain patterns, but it is becoming clearer that the new year that starts tomorrow night will be a year of many new beginnings that will deepen and stabilise the transition into the new life.
Have a Happy New Year .
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