In Hoc Signo – 2026-05-29

5 Years to Complete This oil painting ‘In Hoc Signo – 2026-06-01’ took me 5 years to complete. It’s my contribution to the environmental debate and Greta Thunberg is my witness. “Was” I said, for she seems busy with other activities these days. Actually, I painted this one over a period of 5 years but that’s not the whole story. Let me explain why. Initially, I was heavily motivated to start it back in 2021. Triggered by the sale of the reference drawing I had only to execute it in oil. So I thought, because after a couple of months I hit a brick wall. The mirror, the banner and Greta on it and other things I had in mind, were quickly captured. What to do with the left part though? It represents the back of the model sitting on her knees in front of the mirror. The Rest Is History Then I decided to have the painting rest for a moment. Let it settle down and reflect on it. Surely ideas for this vast empty space would come to mind. They didn’t come so I set it aside, only to do some elaborations in 2023. Then came 2025 and I almost forgot about it, standing backwards against the wall. Almost feel guilty when I happened to turn it around. To be honest, there is a true boulevard of broken dreams in my hallway. What’s the remedy? Just pick up one and pick up the pieces. Meditate in front of the painting at the end of the day. See if the painting could tell me what to do and so it did all at once. A breakthrough really. I saw a desert filled with secrets. The rest is history. Explaining a Joke? Telling the story of this painting feels like explaining a joke. Every attempt feels like a sorrow one. However, I’m all too aware of weary artists I have seen, who were simply too avant-garde. To them, conveying their thoughts felt so logic but you can get too far ahead. People are always at a disadvantage compared to what an artist gives birth to. This compensates for over-explaining and the painting, I realize, has become a complex and layered piece of art. Here We Go So here we go: The story started with my model posing in front of a mirror in my bedroom, back in 2019. That session spawned the graphite pencil drawing under the same name ‘In Hoc Signo - 2019-10-14’. So, the first part of my story starts there. You can click the link to read my art statement to that drawing, to catch up. A month earlier I already covered the environmental issue in ‘Yeast - 2019-09-18’. Many artists paint out of an inner urge and so do I. First I had to complete: ‘The Restoration of Bettie Page – 2020-04-01’, Frida Kahlo - 2020 and ‘Mother Nature – 2021-01-22’. Finally, I started this one in March 2021 and the beginning obviously is very easy. Simply transferring the reference drawing onto the wood panel. Then came the insights … El Dorado The first insight was to turn my model into gold (in the mirror) like a sort of female El Dorado. Weren’t the Conquistadores searching for their own kind of unobtanium? You can fill in the rest from there. Fire Tornado The fire tornado came naturally. In aforementioned reference drawing I already included flames. They symbolize California burning at that time, which I replaced by a burning New York in this oil. Now, I wanted something more dramatic: an apocalyptic scene. A vortex of terror, about to suck in and consume all things man-made. This would lead to the next thought: the swelling of the sea to hurricane dimensions. Environmental Pollution The Sea wasn’t enough. Dali included Columbus’ ships arriving in the new world and I had to come up with replacements for those. Two industrial chimneys and a containership losing its cargo. Furthermore, an oil puddle at the shore the standard bearer is about to step into. How to Paint Trash Initially, I planned to paint a lot of garbage too, adrift on the waves and washing ashore on the quay. However, I abandoned that plan. Years ago, in 2004, I already tried to paint the consequences of the big tsunami in Phuket. Back then I was shocked by a photo of two Dutch guys with beer bellies, standing on the beach while Thai people were cleaning up trash in the background. A dramatic scene, yet it seemed unpaintable to me. Rubble piles or trash can lead to the viewer not knowing where he or she is looking at. Eventually, not catching the painter’s drift and that’s what I wanted to avoid. Rubber Duckies Then came the solution. All of a sudden, I remembered the ’28,000 friendly floatees’ incident. The containership I painted must have planted that idea in my head. Rubber duckies set adrift from a lost container seems like an innocent, even funny story. They release microplastic throughout the years though, slowly poisoning marine life and eventually us too. Yellow matched the golden colors of the mirror perfectly. So, there they go: silently smiling in the most screaming color (yellow). The Queen and I The standard bearer is me and why not? Surely, I needed a model that could express disgust, about to step onto the oily quay. These were Corona times and the only model around then was me. On the banner I replaced Dali’s Gala by The Environmental Queen Greta Thunberg. Look at the halo behind her head. It’s a nuclear explosion. She is standing on scorched globe. The Mirror At first the mirror was challenging but I always knew I wanted to include it in gold. Not the whole mirror but mainly the sides. In my bedroom I have one hanging on the wall. But what to do with these acanthus mouldings and ornamental rebates? There was this vague idea that kept on popping up in my mind: a side story to tell, in those outer edges. Something that could play the same role as decorated medieval book initials or figures on flying buttresses on a cathedral. The plan grew slowly but steadily but it took me some years to realize them. First and foremost, there were two inner borders. The inner border consists of stacked symbols of the Eye of Ra (destruction) to the right. Tot the left I stacked symbols of the Eye of Horus (healing). The Figures The figures, aka ‘gargoyles’ or ‘grotesques’ came too and sudddenly really. To the right they represent the effect of pollution and to the left there is this unspoiled world in which animals still flourish. The hands holding each other or letting go at the top were inspired by Michelangelo’s fresco, called ‘The Creation of Adam’ in the Sistene Chapel. Color Shift The bottom part of the mirror sides is finished in gold and in the upper part I followed the color shift from the rainbow. There are some fine and expensive paints used for it. The gold (Schmincke) is not very expensive. However, the iridescent Williamsburg paints are, followed up by true ruby red and true topaz orange (Schmincke specials). The idea was to create a kind of escalation ladder: all colors and therefor all emotions come to mind, thinking of our world going to waste. As to the color scheme in the mirror itself, I used a lot of purple and blues. You can see them on the quay and in the tornado. They conflict all things yellow and orange in a complementary way. The Left Part The world is being held up to a mirror on the right part. As described above I came up with desert dunes, following the curves on the back of my regular model. The Eye of Ra & Horus symbols automatically evoked this Egyptian feel. Secrets of old, lurking beneath the sands, partially covered and slowly unrevealing their beauties. These were all associations with the world in its original state, before humanity shaped it by electricity, concrete and plastic. Egyptian rubber ducks lie scattered across the sand, eroding by time. Nature over Machines There is this caryatid temple, visited by Indiana Jones-type of archaeologists. Their cars are stuck in the sand and about to be rescued by a caravan. An old poem came to mind: “Wisdom wanes beside plain common sense. Be sharp of thought, not proud and recompense. For learned men, in folly’s tangled skein, forged a lion — and it made them slain.” In the end, nature prevails over machines and the hubris of humanity. By the way, don’t you love those Indiana Jones movies too? American archaeologists usually tend to barge in like a bull in a china shop looking for that one little artifact. The entrance to a temple below right to the Caryatid temple represents Göbekli Tepe’s temple features. Thus, civilizations come and go, created out of and devoured by nature. La Langue Verte Something was missing. In the sky up high there could be a kind of eye catcher. Then I learnt about the protective Egyptian bird and that of course is Nekhbet and related to her: Mut. The hairclip of Isis, her wings unfurled, stands as a symbol of protection of nature. Its colour green is as mysterious as the green colour of the waves to the right. ‘La Langue Verte’: who can speak it and what does it say about Isis’ hawk wings and waves? Bringers of life and death. The Burning Bush / Brush The burning bush is at the upper left and obviously my burning brush reflects it. After all, we all are fractals of the divine. Look it up in the bible or on Wikipedia if you want further explanation. The slanted brush points towards the burning bush. Together with the vulture and/or the pyramid they create badly needed triangles. They compensate for verticals that were already present in abundance throughout the painting. Look at the hare staring at the viewer in the back in the middle of the hand. Nature’s aware, all the time! Does it make you, not seeing it, unaware? The Pyramid Finally, the pyramid! First, I painted it almost impressionistically. That didn’t satisfy me. Jan van Eyck came to mind and his painting of Chancelor Rodin, worshipping the Madonna and Child, again! Who am I to try to surpass this old master? Well, a living painter and Jan is long gone. The pyramid and the foreground with all the workshops and harbour took me one month. Painting it, stone by stone. That took me three elaborations. first, draw contour delineations with a 10/0 Da Vinci Maestro brush. Then the stones themselves and next the light and dark shadows. With magnifying glasses and that brush I was able to stack 120 rows of stones on top of eachother. The Khufu pyramid counts 210 rows but the resolution simply couldn’t keep up with this number. “Als Ic Can” Van Eyck would have said. “Soe ic volge” say I, standing next to Jan. Oil on wood panel (120 x 85 x 0.9 cm) Artist: Corné Akkers