If you close your eyes, it's only partly true that you don't see anything. Nevertheless, it's a fact that you can no longer see what's around you. If, for instance, I ask you to think of a picture you know well, your ability to make up an inner image makes you see it in a different way. We call this to ''see before us''. In this way we remember what we have seen, and in the same way we can imagine pictures of what we haven't seen. We can even be told what another person has been dreaming in her sleep and get an idea of what it was like. We have a large stock of images within us. If you ask me which one painting I remember best from my childhood, there's no doubt about it:

It is a painting that was hanging so that I could look at it from my seat at the dining table. It was easy to get carried away by the picture when the grown-ups were talking about matters that didn't interest me one bit. The painting was a reproduction. The French artist Paul Gauguin had done the original. It was once said that the title was ''The White Horse'', which puzzled me, for as far as I could judge, there was not a single white horse in the picture. I can clearly see the picture before me even today: There were three horses, and the third one was on its way into the picture. This horse was brown; on its back was a wretched-looking person, who was crouching to avoid being hit by branches. Then there was a reddish horse a little further on with a lady astride, her back towards me, and she was riding into the picture. The first horse was in front of the others. It was green and was lowering its head to drink from a stream. The entire atmosphere in the painting was that of peaceful woodland and lush beauty. But where was the white horse?There was only one big whitish shape in the picture; could that be the horse?Consequently, an instensive act of recreation was begun. With the utmost of good will and helpful imagination I finally managed to make the shape look like a white horse. Its long ears and strange spots on the stomach was accetable, but I couldn't see its feet however much I twisted and turned. It had probably lain down to rest. At long last, the white horse had got into the picture, and I was set at rest.

As an adult, I was once part of an interested group looking at a picture in the Orsay Museum in Paris. We were going to study impressionist art. I got quite a surprise when we came to the third painting. It was ''Le Cheval Blanc'' by Paul Gauguin. The guide asked us to pay particular attention to how the artist had managed to acquire the shades on the white horse in the foreground by giving it green hues. I felt frustrated standing there, as I wanted to step forwards and point at the poor, deformed white horse that I had placed in the picture. I let the group move on and remained quiet in front of the painting until I perceived that the brightest shape could definitely not be a horse, but was supposed to be the winding riverbank of a small stream.

I have painted a picture that is a homage to all green shades which may be exactly what the onlooker wants it to be. Art is quite generous in that respect. One says that all depends on the eyes that see. I believe that I am not the only one who has put my own horse into the pictures of others. It's the child's way of perceiving art. I willingly quote the French artist Henri Matisse: “Geniality is being able to return to childhood whenever it's needed. So go ahead and try!

The title of the picture is ''Homage to a Painting''. The technique is hand-coloured black and white print, mixed technique. Colour: Acrylic. Paper: Rag paper. Size of original picture: 40x60cm.

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