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Light and colour

With his screen prints, light installations and paintings, George Smits strives for only one goal: for the viewer to experience a two-way traffic from 'heaven' to his own soul and back. This description is perhaps a bit woolly, but by looking oneself and enjoying the light and colour radiance, that experience becomes very concrete.

In 1980, George Smits wrote an elucidation to his ideas and realisations concerning light and colour: 

'3 years ago, I published a series of works, produced according to this process.

On a piece of transparent acetate, transparent colours were printed and painted. A sheet was presented in front of a crumpled piece of aluminium foil and got illuminated – all at once or bit by bit – with a small yet powerful spotlight. I did like the effect, but I really had doubts about the value of the materials and started something else. By chance, I had recently read Aldous Huxley's Heaven & Hell and in the book, I found the meaning of this kind of work explained, which I could not put into words myself. This has encouraged me to start a new series. Again, it's “paintings” (...).

Following is a passage from the aforementioned book, as an introduction to viewing this work:

"Most paradises are adorned with buildings, and, like the trees, the waters, the hills and the fields, these buildings are bright with gems. […]

Similar descriptions are to be found in the eschatological literature of Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam. Heaven is always a place of gems. Why should this be the case? [...]

Men have spent enormous amounts of time, energy and money on the finding, mining and cutting of colored pebbles. Why? The utilitarian can offer no explanation for such fantastic behavior. But as soon as we take into account the facts of visionary experience, everything becomes clear. In vision, men perceive a profusion of what Ezekiel calls 'stones of fire,' of what Weir Mitchell describes as 'transparent fruit.' These things are self-luminous, exhibit a preternatural brilliance of colour and possess a preternatural significance. The material objects which most nearly resemble these sources of visionary illumination are gem stones. To acquire such a stone is to acquire something whose preciousness is guaranteed by the fact that it exists in the Other World. [...]

In other words, precious stones are precious because they bear a faint resemblance to the glowing marvels seen with the inner eye of the visionary. 'The view of that world,' says Plato, 'is a vision of blessed beholders'; for to see things 'as they are in themselves' is bliss unalloyed and inexpressible.[...]

And this return to the source is not merely symbolical; it is also a matter of immediate experience. For the traffic between our Old World and its antipodes, between Here and Beyond, travels along a two-way street. Gems, for example, come from the soul's visionary heaven; but they also lead the soul back to that heaven. Contemplating them, men find themselves (as the phrase goes) transported - carried away toward that Other Earth of the Platonic dialogue, that magical place where every pebble is a precious stone. And the same effects may be produced by artifacts of glass and metal, by tapers burning in the dark, by brilliantly colored images and ornaments; by flowers, shells and feathers; by landscapes seen, as Shelley from the Euganean Hills saw Venice, in the transfiguring light of dawn or sunset."

“There is something so different in Venice from any other place in the world, that you leave at once all accustomed habits and everyday sights to enter an enchanted garden.” 'Lines Written among the Euganean Hills' By Percy Bysshe Shelley. 

Whether it's dazzling fluorescent screen printing, the rainbow colours of the light spectrum or the deep oil paint shades, all George Smits's pictorial work has one common goal: to arouse, here and now, this concrete 'heavenly' experience.