Price : This painting has a rather special history. I was reading a book called “Bingo Crepuscule” by Sébastien Japrisot. This is a story about young men torn out of their lives and families and placed in the trenches of the 1st World War. They experienced the complete lack of meaning in their existence there, and they saw what the war did to decency. A conscience grew inside that drove them to withdraw from the front. They went AWOL after a leave, and were sentenced to death. But instead of being executed by their countrymen, they were taken to a place called “Bingo Crepuscule”. They were forced to climb up the ladder out of the trench and into the sights of German soldiers who shot them one by one. This audio book followed my work from day to day, and when the book was done, the painting was also done. But what had I painted?? It didn’t look like anything | had painted before, and I never used brown… Suddenly it struck me: My painting was what l’d listen to. In the painting one see the trenches in winter, mustard gas, the military uniforms. It’s all there. I hadn’t deliberately painted this. I concluded that I had been a kind of medium. I had performed what my mind was occupied with. This was the first time I experienced this. Later it happened several times. I understood this when I later came across a quote by Henry Matisse: “Truth and reality in art do not arise until you no longer understand what you are doing”.