Impressions from the opening night

Dorothea Breick
is sharing her recent oil paintings from 2020 and 2021

Illusion looking at illusion
opening evening Friday, 8 October 2021

Dharma Mati
Soorstrasse 85
14050 Berlin

viewing after prior arrangement
Tel.: +49 23 255 010
www.rigpa.de

view recent oil paintings

previous exhibition, Berlin 2020

Speech for the opening of the exposition by Tui Schrijver

I will start with a disclaimer… What I am about to say is highly biased. It is not at all an objective observation of the work of Dorothea. But I am happy to share my point of view with all of you. And perhaps you might even find some similarities in your own experience. Who knows…

Dorothea , let me start with saying that, I feel you are not really a painter… I would rather say you are a medium, that allows particular experiences to manifest in the form of paintings. You don’t merely paint what you see, you deeply connect with what you see and then allow something to manifest. Your paintings communicate more than just something from you, they communicate something from life. It’s almost as if you enhance the speech of life to that we can actually hear it and understand it. Like a visual amplifier. 

With your paintings you don’t just capture a certain image, like one would do with a photo. Somehow you are able to express an experience with your paintings. It resonates on many more levels than just the visual. Most importantly it resonates in the heart. You communicate joy, tranquility, lightheartedness, profound insight, curiosity. You connect us to the experience of the immense depth of the sky, the sparkling beauty of a flower, the earthy presence of autumn, the delicious satisfaction of a breakfast table.

By looking at your paintings, we are transported. It’s as if we step through a door with our eyes, to arrive in a different realm. Sometimes this seems to be related to an experience that we ourselves have had before, because we might know the place. Many of us are familiar with Lerab Ling and its surroundings, so we recognize places, images, experiences. But somehow your paintings communicate much more than that. It’s like you open the door to another layer of a visual experience. In the Tibetan Buddhist tradition there is mention of ‚hidden pure lands‘. These are sacred places and to get there, one cannot just follow a map. A guide is needed, a realized spiritual master, to show  the way. I feel  you are such a guide, highly realized in expressing the deeper, more subtle  aspects of our visual experience. In beautiful paintings! 🙂

For example this breakfast table: I have seen it in real life many times. Exactly like this. And I didn’t experience it in any particular, extraordinary way. It was a table, with food on it – which I enjoyed. But when I look at it on the painting, it is so beautiful! It’s almost magical. It has light, it has flavor, it has enjoyment, it has the vibrancy of life. That is a very special quality of your paintings: That you bring out, that you manifest the heart experience of a moment. 

Thank you Dorothea for sharing with us all these beautiful hidden pure lands!

Berlin Dharma Mati, October 2021