Winter this year was once again with us. Strange and solitary, but not alone. With a reluctant heart to guard us, with whispers of rain to lull us, and with the aimless gusts of the wind to pelt us. Somewhere there, amidst intoxicated desires and nostalgia for paradise, we sought ascetics to stand on purpose-built planks, to recite spells in despair, and to throw stones at the futility of progress. And we sought to build life with earth and light in these small icons; life as it has been for centuries in the hearts and bodies of ascetics; life as the unity of everything, happening now and forever with effort and pain, through the voluntary sacrifice of the self. And so we embarked on a long journey towards the departure for the Ithaca of colors and the magnificent Penelope of forms. And we had to find ways to marry colors, and to fit movements secretly, so that the life of ascetics would become painting, life from the side of ascetics, where everything intermingles, kissing each other upon their return to the great womb of Life.

My ascetics have many triumphant colors, because they are messengers who proclaim the power of beauty, colors that modestly and tenderly shout that the world cannot live otherwise than with the boundless freedom that is willing to be sacrificed for the sake of the enemy; with the silence that never precedes the question; with the love that endures and holds all the distortions, pain, and death of the world in its body with joy.