Yawning, I open the curtains of my bedroom. Before my sleepy eyes, unfolds a world bathed in sunlight. Curtains are a kind of dividing line between two opposing worlds. My bedroom curtain separates the sleeping world from the harsh realistic outside world.
I’m still a bit drowsy in the kitchen. Chewing on my breakfast, my thoughts go back to the curtains. In the present, there is an invisible curtain between the terrible violence of war in Ukraine and the still peaceful part of Europe.
There used to be an Iron Curtain between the world in the East and the world in the West. There was also, maybe still, a Bamboo curtain between a part of Asia and China. Today there is an information curtain between the (fake) virtual and real worlds. Always that dividing line or curtain between two opposing worlds. Worlds that developed separately and did everything to convince each other that their world was the best.
I slide my virtual curtains open and closed as a kind of day and night rhythm. As I don’t want to see the real world and withdraw into my own world. A world of being creative. To be able to organize my thoughts. Create new drawings. Trying to understand this crazy world. My virtual curtains are very functional in that respect and also a kind of protection.
I get up. Let things go. I slide open the curtain in my head to everyday reality. Ah, yes, groceries. I still have to deliver my work, commissioned, to the buyer. Close the door behind me. Stop in front of the supermarket. Shopping list. Race between racks and advertising screams. Load my groceries into the car. Groceries cleaned up. Carefully put my work in the car and drive to the buyer. Buyer satisfied, even enthusiastic. Money.
Money is actually also a curtain. A curtain between being able to live with dignity, or be cast out and having to roam the streets. To be viewed and treated there as a kind of inferior being.
Sighing, I tidy up the breakfast mess and the rest of the house. Straighten my bed and open the window.
I close my virtual curtains to retreat into my own world. I stare at a blank canvas. The light from my studio window creeps in timidly. I grab a random sketchbook from the stack. I leaf through it mindlessly. Sit back and stare at the clouds slowly passing by the window.
The incompleteness of things storms my head. As human beings, we always need curtains to separate things without being aware of it. For example, curtains between the present and the past.
In Greek antiquity, there was once a competition between the painter Zeuxis and his colleague Parrhasius from Ephesus: he tried to outdo his rival Zeuxis, who painted a bunch of grapes so faithfully that birds flocked to it, by depicting a curtain so realistic that Zeuxis wanted to slide it open.
I straighten up and slide my virtual curtain open again and start working out my drawing on the canvas. The sounds of the outside world fade into the background. I’m safely in my own world.
