Baudelaire believed that only those few human beings able to pay ransom for their own soul would be able to make it on Judgment Day. This capital can be earned via just two routes, both equally arduous: You must accomplish some great deed either in art or in love. The beautiful colors and forms these two elusive phenomena may take on are your sole means of bribing the angels, who will vote for or against you based uniquely on your merits in either of these fields. Hoping to score double points, I have opted to make art about love.

The material point of departure for the Swirling series is bare bones: a simple HB pencil and a standard size drawing pad. Drawing, one might say, is exactly what mass visual media are not: a means of specific, subtle and persistent engagement, not of general seduction. Works that slowly come into being only speak to those who look slowly. The time-consuming, concentrated drawing process appeals to me because I see in it some kinship with the solitary, meticulous work of monks.

This ties in with my choice of the grisaille as pictorial language: The mono- or achromatic palette was once the only one allowed in Cistercian monasteries which rejected the excitation of the senses, including the distraction of color. The visual silence of Cistercian art allowed the monks to reflect on the salvation of their souls without being lead astray by "les formes distrayantes et inutiles" of the material world of soft, glowing flesh and blushing red apples. Similarly, Peter Handke tells us in Der Himmel über Berlin that the angels can only perceive the world in black and white; colors are just for earthlings. By restricting myself to such ascetic means while treating what I see as a flagrantly sexual theme, I wish to comment on the paradoxical copresence of supposed opposites, the spiritual and the corporeal.

Hovering, glowing spheres have been a recurrent element in my work for the past seven years. Initially, I saw the globe as just a private symbol. It first manifested itself during meditation, when I had a very physical sensation of holding a radiant orb in my cupped hands. The experience made me perceive the closed circuit of the globe as an emblem of spirituality, that spark of otherworldly consciousness within reminding us that we are not disconnected morphemes without a larger context.

Gradually, I realized that this personal symbol didn't just emerge out of a vacuum. Why is it that the pushy psychics on 42nd Street read your future in a crystal ball, the Good Witch in the Wizard of Oz materializes from a floating sphere, and the plastic Buddhas of certain contemporary Japanese artists swirl around in shiny orbs? Pop culture reflects archetypes, and it turns out that the sphere has a long history as a mystical symbol. As an astrological sign, the orb represents the immaterial spirit of life, as opposed to the physical body. Many icons depict Mary and Christ holding the orb of the sun god in their hands. In Christian symbolism, the solar connection is to resurrection and immortality: the orb is the risen Christ. Moreover, the sun-like golden globe stands for the ultimate goal of alchemy: Through the transformation of base material, the alchemist arrives at coniunctio, the mystical union with the divine principle.

However, just as Yin always contains a grain of Yang and vice versa, traditional symbols can be ambiguous. At first, all the historical evidence I gathered seemed to fall neatly into place: The globe represents spirituality. Then my laboriously threaded chain of pearls was suddenly ruptured. Looking at one of my all-time favorite paintings, The Exposure of Luxury (1546) by Bronzino, I was delighted to recognize the glowing orb I had visualized in my own hands as identical to the one held by Venus. But Venus? Returning to my art historical sources, I discovered that the globe also serves as the attribute of Eros and of the Earth Goddess Cybele. My sense of confusion was downright Confucian: "Shock comes - oh, oh! Laughing words - ha, ha! The shock terrifies for a hundred miles." (I Ching) How can the time-honored symbol of spirituality simultaneously be the very emblem of physical seduction?

Like the particle-in-a-box of quantum physics, Cupid's globe set every single element of my thesis in motion, and clarity disintegrated into entropic disorder. But once these fluttering pieces crystallized into a pattern, I could see a bigger picture. While traditionally representing the firmament and the heavenly spheres, the orb obviously also speaks of earthly humanity, in that it is also the very ball of soil on which we live. Moreover, the sphere is Eve's apple, representing fecundity, sensuality and passion. In medieval anatomical codices, it signified the heart and the circulation of blood. All this is the domain of Eros, and vibrant red is its color. Hence, the red globe is spiritual AND sensual experience.

I used to think that monastic seclusion at a safe distance from my body was the way to knowledge. Now I am convinced that human beings are clothed in flesh for a reason: The path is through the skin. Opting for either Dionysus or Apollo is choosing the easy way out; the challenge is to maintain the balance between the two. Preceding my Apollonian task at the drawing table then, is the very physical labor of enacting all the female poses in my drawings. In order to tell these stories in images, I must first experience them in my body. The bruises and cuts I endure along the way remind me that I am made of flesh and blood. This sensory awareness is the indispensable complement to the mental portion of my process: The mind is a muscle, just like the globe is to be found in human breasts, buttocks, biceps, balls and bald skulls.

The hemispherical shape of these flesh parts reminds me of the famous story of Aristophanes in Plato's Symposium: The primeval human came in pairs (man-man, woman-woman and the androgyne) shaped like my globes, constantly swirling and rolling. This mighty race rose to attack the gods, and in revenge, Zeus decided to cut all humans in two, "like a sorb-apple which is halved for pickling". After this division, the resulting sections of humans are doomed to a frantic search for their other half: The desire for the Other is implanted in us because it represents the reunion with our original nature, when humanity was part of a larger scheme.

Catching and shaping a full orb out of severed halves, or keeping balance on the invisible string uniting opposite poles, remains the big juggling feat. Just as the individual sheets constituting the Swirling series may swap orientation, shift, and slither to form ever-changing constellations, a globe is never stable, but always swirling, slipping and sliding out of your grip.