Alpha and omega

30 x 40 cm

1997

“In the course of 1992 the transition from figuration to abstraction takes place.

In hindsight you see how the abstraction was already much longer busy taking its place in her figurative paintings.

But it was not until 1991 that a real takeover came to light.

The takeover comes from the background.

In a few portrait paintings we see how this background is getting more and more abstract and how it gradually ‘swallows’ the figure in the front, until there are only some loose abstract parts of this figure left.

Most striking: of the head there is only a tiny, sovereign circle left, which will act in quite a lot of her later Meta-paintings in a most penetrating way.

In Trinity (p. 20) and Alpha and omega we find this circle at the place where we once found the head: above something that can be seen as a representative of the body.

To my mind these two small Meta-paintings are nothing less than universal portraits of man, brought back to what he essentially is.”

From the chapter From figuration to abstraction,

from the book Meta-art

by Mick van Schooneveld