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Foreword of an yet unpublished book

Light over water

A meditation on love consciousness

While staying beside this river in a forest reserve in Brazil,

I ran out of painting material, and used what was then available: a camera. Most of these photos were taken at the same time, before the sun set behind the mountains.

The text includes meditations and questions, which have been with me for years and extracts of letters sent to the Pope, the European

Parliament, presidents, governors, ministers, and people in different parts of the world, in the hope of clearing long, tiresome and hopeless conflicts

of human beings upon this planet.

If we, human beings are intelligent enough to invent a weapon

that can blow up this world, we must, at least find a solution to live

in peace with each other.

Hate is the false prophet, love is the true master.

Is it too dangerous to stand beside someone who says this ?

meditations from 2001 to the present date.

van Chapman

About the film project

:"Garden Angel"

"Garden Angel" is a rather poetic visual poem, a short experimental nature filmseries, possibly to be accompanied by music that conveys depth and calmness of mind, from ancient, modern or classical repertoire future.

The scenes happen by chance, as a traveler in a strange always unknown land.

The events demonstrate the intimate relationship between the main character, our GARDEN ANGEL, and nature.

In the scenarios of mystic river banks of tropical rain forest (in Brazil), and beside, around and inside the magic garden of Myriam Vandenberghe, our Garden angel, in the heart of Ghent, Belgium, where the time stands still.

Whether its a river in a tropical rainforest or a drop of water on a leaf in a flowergarden, the beauty, unity, and the mystery is the same.

For the quiet simple mind, nature's beauty, reveals itself.

More than just telling a story, the images in these shorts reveal, the wonder that each of us has ever had as a child, and that wisdom teaches us never to lose.

So we walk in nature as a museum of infinite fascinating forms of living art.

The structure is a combination of sensitive nature pictures + videos of simplethings or events in a near-cinematic presentation, to further combine with livemusic performances or other forms of music in 8 nature short film presentations of 15 minutes (about 2 hours in total).

The visual approach is: from the macro lens, a poetic microcosm from the viewpoint of an insect grows tothe unity of a philosophical macrocosm.

Discovering and sharing the beauty of the treasures of nature and spiritual consciousness.

van Chapman and Myriam Vandenberghe

A HIDDEN TREASURE

If Art is about inner truth, then nothing could be more actual in this world (of global warming, fratricide wars), than the treasures Myriam discovers or creates in the silence of her kind soul.

If I would have the choice I would not doubt. Rather than futuristic nightmares, I rather live in the magical gardens she architects for the future: The green, pure, innocent, violence-free worlds she paints and photographs.

As the great classical music, Myriam's art and being, can be seen today as of another time; and forgotten.

How much per cent of the population listens to the treasure of classical music in Radio stations as Klara? Alarming statistics in the past, if I remember well, said it is around one per cent of the population in the area. I do not know if it has evolved.

The explanation for this phenomena is in the spiritual level of the masses.

As the stronger wavelengths of popular radio stations (like radio Donna) have dulled away the cultural radios, as Klara, in Belgium, pop culture gurus would dull her work off the scene.

For most of the people, the real treasure of classic music or of Myriam's art is still buried.

Has the time come for it to be discovered ? I can only present this mysterious person to you, personally, or through my own work, and hope you will see them as the treasures they are.

The answer depends on you.

***

A brief exchange with a guru of Modern Art

MYRIAM'S WORK versus CONTEMPORARY ART.

Once on a brief exchange, Jan Hoet, without even knowing me, said to me he that 'he could never be my friend'.

I disagree with him.

Not to have the same view on Art is not a reason not be friends.

We can understand each other if we want to, if we are not too proud to be questioned, and to be willing to want to understand each other.

He prejudiced me because of some post cards of Myriam Vandenberghe's nature paintings he saw in my hand.

To project our prejudices on another, on what is, and want no discussion, is the main cause of disruption in any relationship.

On another occasion, I came with one of his friends to a dinner he gave in honour of the Broodthaers' Mossel-pot.

At a certain moment I stood before all his guests and asked him: -"What is more important to you: Love or Art?

He answered that Art could not compete with neither Nature nor Love.

After the dinner, according to the person who took me, Jan Hoet said in Flemish to him:

-"Godverdomme"! Who did you bring with you!?...

Before I left, I told Jan Hoet that one day I would make his portrait.

Here at least, is a philosophical portrait of our brief exchanges:

Jan Hoet is in contradiction when in one hand he affirms the superiority of love and Nature over Art,

and on the other, snobs an extraordinary expression of love for nature and all living beings as mere 'decoration'.

***

OUR STANDPOINTS:

If Art would be about form or fashion, and not spirit, then even if created pollution and insensibility, it may be considered as art,

while even those promote life and peace, if not according to form, would be disconsidered.

To say a work is a work of Art because it is 'IN' (fashion) is the greatest fault contemporary art exponents can make, then, an urgent change of heart is needed for contemporary art ..

Here the issue is not only a question of taste, it is a matter of consciousness.

The only thing which can stop human bloodshed history and save the Earth, is to be humble enough to see what is and not prejudge anyone.

There is nothing substantially new in a work of art, in a revolution, when you substitute one vanity of power for another, substitute one prejudice for another.

van Chapman

Philosophic Community Projects

www.naturestudio.net.

In his Perennial Philosophy, Hermann Hesse gave a beautiful example from ancient Chinese literature of the sign of a great artist: Ching, a famous artist who made sculptures of supernatural* beauty , was asked how he made such art.

His method was to rid the mind from obstacles: in the first day he meditated and got rid of the desire to become rich. The next day he meditated, and got rid of the desire for prestige and fame. In the third day, of the desire for power, and so on.

On the seventh day, he went to the forest for some wood, and made his sculpture.

(* supernatural is a term that can simply designate the natural power of a meditative -contemplative love- consciousness, when all vanity of power is gone and the mind is clear).

The great sensibility and love for every living creature as in Myriam Vandenberghe and her work, can be looked down upon (as mere decorative) by the defenders of Cloaka

as being Great Art

Once on an interview on TV Jan Hoet declared that he was a Catholic and a Jew.

as simple awareness which brings natural order to the mind and relationships.

<beliefs can be

what spiritual teachings have in common is that they are as good teachers,

who welcome questioning for the sake of mutual understanding,

but the moment you create an (unquestioning) authority, you create much more hell than not.

because all believers of opposing beliefs not having a chance to reason with their belief, instead of solving their differences peacefully, through intelligent arguments and intelligent dialogue, may end up like brute dinosaurs sending each other to hell while all opposing bullies believe themselves to be heros and martyrs and go to heaven after the slaughter.

REACTION ON THE CANVASCOLLECTIE

van Chapman,

Philosophic Community Projects

www.naturestudio.net.

Today in Oostende MU ZEE we were interviewed by a young and friendly female jury.

First I placed my works facing the wall on the floor, showed the backside of the mounted, asking them to tell me which side, the photo in front or the backside, was the real art work and we left it at that.

I explained that what had brought me was my sympathy for Canvas. the openness for dialogue.

( the more integer cultural and humanitarian approach of Canvas TV, its presentators, programs and reporters).

I said that that even if my work was not selected, I had something for them, which I had spent the last nightsawake in order to make...And gave to each of the three ladies a copy of my thoughts on ar which now I publish on my website, withy an invitationto publish their reaction on it.

After we looked at my waterforms video, (which in their computer, by of some incompatibility was very unstable), they had to speak to each other alone.

When I was invited to return to hear their decision, one of them said the dialogue on art had interested her.

She suggested me to work on these waterforms individually because she found the worthwhile, but found the constant changing forms too overwhelming.

With a possibility we can enter in the dialogue on art, she sent me off the selection

After that, walking along the beach of Oostende I looked with pleasure at the soft dune patterns on the sea side, and the saw the fragments of plastics and trash half buried in the sand, moving on the wind as images one can find in contemporary art.

I contemplated the incompatibility between the" programs" of those of us who vibrate in harmony at a glimpse of the pure nature and that of those of us for whom the trash of civilization, the cola plastic bottles, the soup tin cans, the plastic rags polluting the sand and the sea are what inspires them and what they are touched by.

TO CANVAS - A DIALOGUE ABOUT ART

van Chapman

Philosophic Community Projects

www.naturestudio.net.

Seeing on Canvas TV about the Canvascollectie, the often cold and gloomy expressions of many of the 'Avant Garde' artists today, like sculptures of bodies smashed inside building materials, if I would see artists as pioneers of the future, the future would look somber indeed.

Since Marcel DuChamp, with his urinoir, we have noticed, it seems modern artists spend a lot of time in the toilet!

They never seem to be tired to look in there for things to exhibit in museums,- from the metal tube structures and toilet accessories, furniture to bodily matter, sex organs, bones, tissues, fats, fluids dirty baby napies, to the very cloaka of Delvoye, apparently fascinated by excreting activities, for all that, with a solid CONCEPT backing it, yes, is modern.

Similarly, most expressions of graffiti or rap-pop-contemporary artists are as the body language of those teen agers seduced by the tough guys of a street gang, proud of their insensitive, arrogant attitudes and foul language, mostly copied from the others, expressions from the excrements of language as 'fucking' with every other sentence, 'shit', 'God damn ' ('Godverdomme'), or 'fuck off', because that is 'COOL" or 'IN'.

And like these teenagers, many contemporary art exponents turn their nose up at, and look down upon those who do not follow them.