Our Mission

Art activities for cultivating Creative Compassion open up to cross-cultural healing

They use the means of the Fine Arts for self-reflection and self-discovery, and enhance Relational Empathy (Maureen O'Hara) and relational empowerment

To achieve our mission we follow museum art of persected artists and museum art of artists who's work relate to artwork of persecuted artists

Shortly before the museum is closing we enter the exhibition room. It shows small sized pastels of the German artist Adolf Hölzel with abstract colour composititons. The pastels are simple and masterly same time. Here is someone working his art to a beauty of completion

Days later the pastel compositions are still alive inside. We are curious: Why is this memory so vivid? The body is giving information: Something about the pastels has been soothing and comforting. Something in the exhibition room has given what is missing in life. What is this something about?

We understand that there has been more than pastels hanging at the wall. Sitting down we listen to the body visualizing the exhibition room again and again

An inner rhythm comes up as a feeling. It then shifts to a movement. We feel we have found a rhythm matching the bodily stored memory. The rhythm is in conjunction with verbalization

We know there is a word to come but this word is not in our native language. We instinctively know the first letter of this word. It starts with capital "S". We try different words with "S". No English word does match

We now realize that the match has to come primarily from the body. The body is holding a knowledge we do not hold. And then, a very strange and complicated word shows up: Serenity

Serenity - This word has never been part of our English spoken vocabulary but we own its rhythm

There is a deep shift inside: Something good has been around this 1920-30s art not to be grasped. Now a symbolization has occured opening up to something further and it comes from embodied rhythm

Se-re-ni-ty. The rhythm of the word makes us think of something spiritual like 'Tri-ni-ty'. We are surpized looking up the dictionary. Serenity is the quality of being peaceful and calm. Is that all? So simple?

One the insights of Prof. Eugene T. Gendlin, founder of Focusing, is this: Life is thicker than theory. There must be more in the word serenity than the dictionary can tell

We decide to recapture Adolf Hölzel's pastel compositions through art practice to feel them. Reproducing them might shift them into new forms. Will those new forms embark a More of....?

We know from experience: Any form coming from the body sense is forwarding meaning freshly. A More of is coming from the form matching the body sense

It feels we have found something meaningful to deal with as a long term project. A part inside has always felt at loss in the world seeking for belonging. Arts engagement with Hölzel's pastels looks like a place to explore this part from a place of empathic curiosity

Hölzel's pastel compositions, illuminating peace and calm in the midst of historical desastrous times, holding a More of ...., are like a lighthouse - an art refuge for building compassion, resilience and action for the good