The ESSENCE of GOD

The ESSENCE of GOD

(oil painting on canvas)

When the Jesuit Father Matteo Ricci arrived in China, towards the end of the sixteenth century, the mandarins, the Confucians and the Taoists welcomed him with measured enthusiasm in their academies, solemn and sacred meetings. But Ricci saw a different way of understanding the origin of life. For Christians, life was the fruit of original sin, God was transcendent, separated from the context of nature, while the Chinese did not place a substantial difference between God, heaven, earth, and living beings. The Christian God is personal, conscious and unique, creator and omnipotent. The Chinese God is a form of energy deriving from two energies, YIN and YANG. These energies are felt in nature and the aim of man is to grasp their essence and fragrance. But the concept of the birth of life of the Confucian Taoists, inspired me, no longer an expulsion from paradise for a sin, but simply the fruit of a primordial maturation in a dark place. The Chinese God at a certain point matures and creatively detaches from himself the dimension that we see, the universe, the stars, living beings.

I meditated and reflected for some years on the image that could express the creative act of God, the one closest to my feelings.

The onion is a metaphor for God, the leaves are us, the universe is nature. When the onion finishes peeling, nothing remains, total emptiness, nothingness. We too mature, all the senses mature, they lead us to new boundaries, new goals, death is the last act of maturation that leads us to another goal.

Antonio Spitaletta