MAJ LETH CONNECTING TO THE HIGHER SELF!(1)
MAJ LETH is a Danish artist living partly in Denmark and partly in Spain with her fiancé, the Dutch artist Frank de Ridder. Maj studied literature and art history at the university in Aarhus, and after that three years as a therapist. She works as a teacher, therapist, advertising designer using creativity and painting in different ways in her work.
Together with her fiancé Frank, they created and started the LUNA-Art-Project; TWO artists, ONE canvas, among others ART NETWORK and developed a new Art-Movement; IMPLOSIONISM. They are both in the abstract expressionistic tradition, Frank as an action-painter and Maj as a colorist. Their way of painting is very different; but as SOUL-PAINTERS
they recognized that their basic thoughts, expressions and movements were common. The connection between inner-explosion IN the soul, expressions FROM the soul and the touch of freedom in the movement between these points, where soul connection raises into a universal language, horizontally, vertically and in depth. In this energy and with this power energy, soul connection is released to SOUL COMMUNICATION. A visible language on the canvas. From these common experiences the ART Movement IMPLOSIONISM was born. Maj is now living as a full-time artist!
Maj, welcome and thank you so much for participating in this project. You have much to say and what you say is so very interesting that your article will be published in two parts. So here we go with part one:
No. 1) What is art to and for you?(generally and personally)
1. What is art to and for me:
Art is freedom – Art is love. Art is tears, blood & rain. Passion, Power & Pain. Art is visual language from the soul. Art is touching eternity from the wing of a butterfly dancing in the air to the beautiful music of deep silence.
Art is seduction. A place and space for the spirits energy to move and a breathing hole for the artist. Art is limitless, meditation, opening to the universe. Art is a positive disturbance to cross a line between giving people what they want and instead what they need.
Art shows the colors of your dreams, visions, imagination, the shapes of your personality, your past and being the lines of the meeting between light and darkness, the forms of the universal soul. Art is collaboration. Art is a way of living, thinking, feeling, perceiving, reacting, relating, expressing, meeting… It is a way of BEING.
Art is MOST of all : SOUL COMMUNICATION.
No 2) What inspires you?
Maybe it sounds strange, but each painting itself inspires me. I am always painting. Always working on more than one painting at the time. And every painting has its own energy, power, will, destination, expression… In every painting there is a point where time touches eternity – where the special becomes universal. And I have to become “one” with the painting to feel that point. This process is the most inspiring to me. It is what the painting gives me.
I am a soul-painter. I have to get into a deep connection with and to my own soul to feel and discover the soul in the painting. In that kind of way I do not have to leave my house to find inspiration. It is always there in the painting itself. Another thing is what has influence on me as a person, as an artist. I am an super sensitive person. Everything around me disturbs me. Positive energy as well as negative energy. It’s always been like that since I was a child.
As an artist it is a huge gift, but as a human being it can also be extremely stressful. I have to be aware of that in every decision I make in my life. The super-sensitivity is always there, and sometimes my CAVE is my best friend. To ground it. As a child I went to the cornfield. Made a kind of cave, where I could lie for hours and just feel the sky, the clouds, the odours, the sounds. Later music became my cave. Poetry. And for years meditations and painting. So through the years I have learned to make room and space for the super sensitivity instead of provoking and overloading it. To choose what I want to have influence on me.
Nature has been the deepest source of inspiration to me. The sea, the sky, the stars, the cliffs and rocks, the trees, the birds, the mountain, the sunset… I try to find the special light,
energy, depth in all things – which is not visible or accessible to the eye at first, – but it opens a door to beauty if you listen very deep. The soul in everything, in all things, inspires me. What happens in the process where I do not only hear but LISTEN, not only look or watch but SEE, not only feel but TOUCH in reaching out. In that process all things, people, nature, situations open a special energy and THIS energy in THIS moment is the deepest source of inspiration to me.
No. 3) When you are painting, creating, where does it take you? Where does your mind travel?
Thanks for this question, Michele. To me there is two parts in it. Creating and painting. When I was working in advertisement I was creating and the creator. There was a customer, who wanted a product. A concept. Limits. Receivers etc. To me it is very different from painting. I am not really sure I am creating when I am painting. Maybe the painting is creating me. Something is happening in the process of becoming and being ONE with the painting. A travelling of the spirit. And this process is there no matter if I am painting or not.
Let me give you an example. When I made the painting MEDITATION (album I) it was the first time I was working with orange. The canvas insisted on the orange color, but my body and soul had a huge and strong resistance against it. Like I could not give ME in to it. It made me feel restless and sad, closed, yes even stressed cause I couldn´t feel the opening. Then I went for a long walk to the sea and made a meditation on the hara chakra, which is connected to the orange,- to the life-energy. Surrounded by the sounds from the sea, the waves kissing the seashore, the odours, the birds – suddenly I felt the turquoise color softly touching the chakra and pure energy floating. I went home. painted all night, until the painting was letting go of me.
It would never have had been a problem for me working with the orange color as a creator in advertisement, because I am in control in the creative process. But in the process of painting I have to give in ,- letting go of control. It is about devotion and soul-communication. Otherwise the canvas simply does not open its deepness to me. Every painting has its own soul. Every painting takes me into a new journey of, in and with the spirit and spirits…
No. 4) Do you think painting, music and health are related and if so, how?
I am deeply convinced that painting, music and health is connected. When I was working as a therapist painting and music were two very important tools. I feel, believe and experience that painting and music is able to soften up blockagess in the body, release the energy and make it flow pure in its own natural way. Painting and music doesn’t lie. It touches. You can not control it with your head and thoughts, but receive the energy with your senses. It can release sadness, anger, frustration, happiness. love, joy and bring balance and grounding. Some music opens my heart-energy, like John Lennon and Tracy Chapman. Some music opens my soul energy, like Katherine Jenkins, Bocelli. Pachelbel, Albinoni, Faurë, Bach. The way painting and music support each other in the process brings LIBERATION to me.
No 5) : How do you feel when you are painting?
FREE. I feel free when I am painting. PEACE. A deep peace inside- The kind of peace, which is only possible in FREEDOM. There is no mask or expectations in painting, like in life. No rules. No limits. I can make a painting of a mask or “mask fall” and connect to that feeling, while I am painting, but at the same time give in to the painting in pure freedom.
When I was younger my personal state of mind always showed up in one way or another in
my paintings. And it could even be painful and stressful to be in the process of painting. Like giving birth. The painting was a tool for me to free myself. For years it has been the opposite way around. I am a tool for the painting. And it is the best gift I have ever been given. Freedom.
Caused by your question I have been thinking about when it changed and why. Probably it has happened step by step, but I am sure it is connected to the time in my life when I started to meditate. I still remember my first meditation in 1995 and the painting I made afterwards. (never published). It was so strong, deep and powerful. A woman laying, her body is a landscape of hills and mountains. Through her (body) grows a tree. Maybe it was the first seed. But also at the same time I was studying at the university. Literature and Art history. Too much activity in the intellectual part of me. The real feeling of freedom came after I finished university.
I have always been coloristic but slowly my paintings changed from symbolic but naturalistic to expressionistic abstract paintings. In THAT process the change happened from painting being a tool for me to me being a tool for painting. And in that dimension the pure feeling of freedom and feeling free is the grounded flower or tree from the seed planted in 1995.
While I have been answering this question, my tears have been running down my cheeks. Soft warm tears of gratitude. Partly cause of the deep gift. Partly cause I suddenly saw the connection to LOVE. The process of being IN LOVE, which behind everything is about our own feelings, – to the dimension where we rise from being IN love to LOVE. Become ONE, cause we realize the other IS not our feelings, but separated from us. When we are IN LOVE, everything is about what we feel the other gives and is giving. But when we LOVE we give for free. It is about giving. Devotion. I never saw that connection so clear connected to my life as an artist. It touched me very deeply.
6. Do you identify with your subject and if so – on what level?
I have through my life been painting in different kind of dimensions. The answer is connected to these dimensions. When I was younger, painting was the best therapy. There was a deep connection between my personal feelings and the subject. And the subject and my personal feelings. I also went through a period of provoking critic from society. Confronting racism, materialism, ethic blindness… Paintings you really cannot bear to look at every day in a living room, but part of being a young rebel, wanting to change the world. I still LOVE when young artist of today do that. Every new generation has to define the world they are living in. My son is now 19 years old, a musician and is doing the same in and with his music.
In that period of my life, writing poetry was maybe more essential than painting. A lot of my paintings were so heavy, that I could not even bear to look at them myself. They were screaming from my wall. Even sometimes made me depressive so I had to hide them in my closet, until I was ready to face them again. I remember one night looking at them and thinking…”It is not the paintings that really disturb me,,,, it is the wall they are hanging on”.
I took them all down and started to paint the wall. But when I had finished… I realized that the wall was full of memories, feelings, expressions… they couldn’t breath anymore … I had to move from the apartment. I needed new walls.
As young people we fight the walls in our inner life. We fight the walls in society. The walls in our connections. We fight for a cause, we fight for freedom. That night I realized that my paintings were just “opinions” hanging on a wall of society. One opinion among others. But a wall is a wall. No matter what we do. And fights are fights. I knew I needed new walls. Symbolically. And a new way of handling them. I moved to a new apartment. And went into another way of painting.
In this phase I had a period of deep fascinating of Objet trouvé. Like closing the eyes, and
then open them to a whole new dimension. Tabula Rasa. A vase was not a vase, but forms and light and reflection and symbolic. A tree was not a tree but energy. An old rusty tin could open the mind. I broke the walls, lines and limits to the surroundings. And started to look behind the objects. Behind the walls.
Everything in the world has a soul. A breathing light behind the walls. Pure energy. In this dimension I became a SOUL-PAINTER. Painting WITH my soul and the soul in every thing. In a way you can say that identification with the subject was complete. But I didn’t paint MY personal feelings and statements anymore. But the soul-energy. To me that energy could only be expressed in abstract paintings. A universal language. A spiritual language.
My “mission” as a painter was no longer a mission. The paintings had to do the work themselves. Either people can feel the energy and relate and connect to it, or not. Either they can open their own soul and energy, breaking their own walls – or not. What they feel and why they feel it – is out of my hands. The same freedom I feel in painting is the freedom the painting itself offers when it is published. The opening is there. It can be reached. Or it can flow into a color-sea.
Most people love my paintings because of my use of colors. Even in my paintings where the main expression is pain, blood, tears, hell… Parts of life which also express colors and life in the end. “Beautiful” people says… because the colors touch them, but the people who choose to put my paintings on their walls are touched deeper in soul than only the colors. And in this dimension the answer to your question is that the receiver identifies with the subject. An energy in their own soul.
But there is one more dimension to add to this question. I met my fiancé, the artist Frank the Ridder, in art networking. Our deepest connection is in ART. We even made the FB-group ART NETWORK together. And more afterwards. We met as ART-lovers and became lovers in ART and life. Our only communication in the beginning was through his paintings and through my paintings and through sharing other artists paintings, touching our souls.
We both have a professional life behind us, where we had to express our creativity in words. For 90 % of our communication in the 
beginning of our relationship was through paintings and music. A deep Soul-Connection. One year ago we made our first LUNA-painting. ONE canvas- TWO painters. But not only two painters, also two painters living in deepest love together. As soul-mates. Like taking a step from having a “muse” to BEING a “muse”. And by BEING a Muse, the painting frees itself from the outside. It is its own inspiration and breathing through its own will.
Besides both being abstract expressionistic painters, our way of painting is very different different. Frank is action-painter. I use a lot of energy to go deep inside the painting and become ONE with it. Frank is explosion, I am implosion. He works with acrylic, I with Oil. He with shapes, I with colors. Etc. But we are both soul-painters. He feels the spirit in the painting… I feel the deep energy.
He always has a touch on the painting pushing it on the canvas out of the frames. I always have a touch on the painting pushing it a bit further into the depth. This process of touching a point between the 3 dimensions… up, down, right, left, inside, outside… yes, you could call it integration of masculine and feminine energy in becoming universal energy… this is simply amazing.
Like making love to the canvas until it creates an opening to pure floating energy. Heaven on earth. You can compare it to the act of “making love” between two lovers. But two lovers in a love-act are only in connection with each other. The surroundings disappears. In the process of LUNA-paintings we have the deep connection to the soul in the painting, which OPENS the energy to the outside. The soul- connection is not only related to us, but an opening to the soul of universe.
To work in this dimension is the deepest and most fascinating thing I have ever experienced
in my life as an artist. And it has a huge influence on my own way of painting. In my own paintings next to LUNA-paintings. The way Frank and I work in the LUNA-project is as painters. It does not reflect our way to live as a couple. In that kind of way we do not identify with the subject. Only with the energy. SOUL-COMMUNICATION
Thank you Maj, for this most enlightening article which we will continue with next week.
TO THE READER :
Please be sure to tune in next week for part two of this fascinating story. You are cordially invited to visit Maj’s links to see more of her art.
Maj is also on Facebook.
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Comments
I like it!
wow you are a good painter, you also talended keep it!….1luv to every1 there
ThanX from the deepest of my heart to both of you,,,,
Hi , Maj.. You are truly wonderful inside and out..I love what you say about Art and how you connect it all with Energy and Soul.. You are the Art.Thanks so much for this .. xo <3
Dearest Susan,,,,
ThanX for these beautiful words and reflections,,,, ThanX for Feeling it,,,, That is what it is all about,,, Love from Maj
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