Artworks by Sol Michiels

Sol’s paintings in recent years are in fact a synthesis of her perception of life and of her growth: a confluence of contents of different origins. She calls them “fragments”. These fragments symbolise passages from various lives, successive phases in this life, in an endeavour to bring together their different strands.

Sol calligraphs all texts herself, wielding a paintbrush on oriental paper, and then incorporates them into her work. They are in the main philosophical texts and poetry derived from Chinese and Japanese culture. In so doing, she uses traditional oriental materials. The aim is not to ensure that the texts are always entirely legible – they are, after all, merely fragments.

Behind all that lies concealed the idea of an ode to the solidarity that binds these fragments, a solidarity between cultures, between man and beast, between all that lives in time and space. Not merely an ode, but – far more – a deep inner quest for a life in harmony with all creatures.