|
|
PSYCHOLOGICAL SELF-PORTRAIT (1996)
(Psychologisch zelfportret )
|
And indeed, a late work painted two years before his death harkened back to these earlier interior landscapes, which we shall call ‘Mindstuff Landscapes’ or even ‘Mindscapes’. The late work, appropriately entitled Psychological Self Portrait (1996), presents the aging Johfra amid the fibres and fungi that constitute his mind’s dark interior.
Throughout Johfra’s career, the substance of his imagination will manifest itself in these varying combinations of organic forms, be they mineral, vegetable, animal or human. Shape, texture, growth, and movement - all will fascinate him to no end. But the intense colours we see in the early works will soon disappear forever.
Another work from the early period reveals, beyond this fascination with the mind’s interior forms, a striving for spiritual transcendence and an ultimate union with the light. In Birth Dream (1945), the organic rocks form an upward-mounting stairway. Meanwhile, from their summit, a singular figure leaps into the light. Such obviously esoteric themes will not appear in his work for atleast another fifteen years.
|
|
|
|
|
BIRTH DREAM (1945)
(Geboortdroom)
|
(Click on any image to enlarge)
|
|
|
|