I place sensation in the center: it is the true link between nature and everything I create. It is what remains inside me from a perception. I usually experience my sensations as passive. They gradually fade as the experience that triggered them gets further away. However, it is possible to handle a sensation actively if we make it into something that it cannot be by itself.
The first step is to increase the intensity of the experience through concentration and observation. It is a good idea to limit ourselves to one thing (for example, in the case of a landscape, to a very specific, fixed impression). The perception must last as long as our experience of it can be increased. When it begins to fade, the second step is necessary. Now the perception must be consciously turned off. Everything that arises inside us from now on must not be directly related to the perception. As a third step, through an act of will, the inner sensation that results from the specific perception is placed at the center of our attention in such a way that it is now an object, not just an effect.
If we hold on to this experience long enough without destroying it by bringing in something else, we will gradually experience the sensation as an active force, as something essential that can itself have an effect. It seeks an external form, a sensory image. What emerges from such a force is neither a mere image of perceived nature nor a personal invention on our part, but a sensory manifestation of a force hidden in perception.
Every time I can create in this way, a piece of hidden nature comes to life in my work, and I experience the bridge between nature and man! (Munich, 1985)
Image Ulrich Schulz, Animus grün
