Ingredients: Coffee, sugar and fantasy

How it all began:  An uncontrolled hand gesture and I spilled my hot, sugared espresso coffee all over my drawing. My work of a whole week was destroyed in an instant. Surprisingly the fast advancing coffee spot triggered my fantasy in a way I could not have imagined. In the coffee spot I saw coffee monsters, dragonheads, octopuses, fairy beings and aliens. My consciousness just got pushed into a new dimension. In addition to my rational, scientific drawing I just received the present of an extended mind into an irrational, chaotic and fantastic world. In an instant I felt happiness coming over me.

In my creative workshops I do emphasize over and over again that intelligence is the skill of not seeing changes as a catastrophic event but to use it creatively and successfully as a tool for advancement.

My coffee stories develop trough provocative, chaotic coincidences. They leave the viewer's imagination open for additional, individual associations and interpretations just like if they were reading in the grain of coffee.

Coffee for me has a wonderful and exhilarating effect. I use it as a starter to activate the network thinking of my brain. Once in motion it works just like an assembly line producing ideas of never-ending stories...

My fascination is to make the invisible visible!
I call my works of art Seismographics, which is an expression, used in the earthquake registration of the earth waves and vibrations.

The undiscovered depth of the ocean of our blue planet inspires my fantasy and gives me the inspiration to paint the deep-sea mysteries as they float weightlessly out of my subconscious mind onto the canvas.

The background color for most of my Deep Sea Mysteries is blue like the deep waters of our planet’s oceans.

Johann F. Ulrich - FANTASTIC TREES

Down through the years these huge and primeval vegetative systems have fascinated me as well as occupying many levels of thought. As we have come to learn nowadays, they are more closely related to us than hitherto assumed.

In fact, I consider them to be mammals of sorts. Because like straws dipped into a life-enhancing drink, they draw nourishment from subterranean realms.

In contrast to human beings, their life expectancy is seemingly unending - the oldest living tree known to date being 5400 years old. By comparison we are but ephemeral beings on this planet.

My trees are products of the imagination - visual creations geared to an apparently tree-oriented human species (to get my point, just observe a gymnast's program). Given that they populated this planet long before we came into existence, we are indebted to these living souls for our very origins and our collective survival. They are our ancestors - our fore-mothers and our fore-fathers, as it were.

Are the catalyst in the creation of these art works. Johann Ulrich applies the following definition to seismography. The visual association with random thoughts, emotions and events of the sub-conscious, semi-conscious and conscious mind. Psychograms woven and spun by intuition, which take about a month to set down on paper in their basic form.

By focusing intensely on these basic forms - faces, figures, animals, strange beings, new forms appear in the mind's eye, rather like the Rorschach Test, and in much the same way as animals and hunting scenes will have appeared to our forefathers in the markings and rocks formations of ancient caves.

We may carry the accumulated knowledge of many millennia within us, yet we still seem unable to gain access to the stored memories of our software by applying our linear school logic. This conviction persuaded Johann Ulrich to try and develop other ways and means of trapping into the fundamentals of human knowledge, that immense memory which is stored in every one of use. In the hope that, during the course of that fantastic voyage to the inner recesses of our software, we may find some answers to the often-inexplicable behavior in our conscious lives.

Peoples fascination with butterflies has a lot to do with the stages of their metamorphoses. The best known of the stages are the egg - caterpillar - cocoon - butterfly.

It symbolizes the fantastic survival skills of this species in extreme geological and climatical changes or disasters. At least at one of the stages it will have the ability to survive. A genius program for the propagation of this species.

Butterflies are also optically fascinating. Perfect camouflage can suddenly explode and shock with aggressive and loud colours when an butterfly opens its wings.

To me are symbols of unbridled freedom of thought, the imagination, creativity, humor. In seemingly hopeless situations or circumstances, birds have the fascinating ability to take off, break the bonds, fly above and beyond everything.

Human-beings can point to a similar, as we can also fly albeit this functions only in our phantasy. We can release ourselves from an oppressive situation by means of humor. In this context, for instance, we gain freedom through laughter.

I love birds, because they are not burdened with worldly possessions and because they can forever resort to flight. I continually learn from them that it is only by casting off unnecessary baggage and stubborn viewpoints that true freedom of flight can be attained.

By the way:
Since time immemorial we have dreamt of escaping the force of gravity.
Since time immemorial we have adorned ourselves with strange feathers.
Basically, we sleep in birds' nests (feathered beds).
In great parts, the history of mankind has been recorded by quills.
Our angels are birds in human clothing.

Are the catalyst in the creation of these art works. Johann Ulrich applies the following definition to seismography. The visual association with random thoughts, emotions and events of the sub-conscious, semi-conscious and conscious mind. Psychograms woven and spun by intuition, which take about a month to set down on paper in their basic form.

By focusing intensely on these basic forms - faces, figures, animals, strange beings, new forms appear in the mind's eye, rather like the Rorschach Test, and in much the same way as animals and hunting scenes will have appeared to our forefathers in the markings and rocks formations of ancient caves.

We may carry the accumulated knowledge of many millennia within us, yet we still seem unable to gain access to the stored memories of our software by applying our linear school logic. This conviction persuaded Johann Ulrich to try and develop other ways and means of trapping into the fundamentals of human knowledge, that immense memory which is stored in every one of use. In the hope that, during the course of that fantastic voyage to the inner recesses of our software, we may find some answers to the often-inexplicable behavior in our conscious lives.

Peoples fascination with butterflies has a lot to do with the stages of their metamorphoses. The best known of the stages are the egg - caterpillar - cocoon - butterfly.

It symbolizes the fantastic survival skills of this species in extreme geological and climatical changes or disasters. At least at one of the stages it will have the ability to survive. A genius program for the propagation of this species.

Butterflies are also optically fascinating. Perfect camouflage can suddenly explode and shock with aggressive and loud colours when an butterfly opens its wings.

To me are symbols of unbridled freedom of thought, the imagination, creativity, humor. In seemingly hopeless situations or circumstances, birds have the fascinating ability to take off, break the bonds, fly above and beyond everything.

Human-beings can point to a similar, as we can also fly albeit this functions only in our phantasy. We can release ourselves from an oppressive situation by means of humor. In this context, for instance, we gain freedom through laughter.

I love birds, because they are not burdened with worldly possessions and because they can forever resort to flight. I continually learn from them that it is only by casting off unnecessary baggage and stubborn viewpoints that true freedom of flight can be attained.

By the way:
Since time immemorial we have dreamt of escaping the force of gravity.
Since time immemorial we have adorned ourselves with strange feathers.
Basically, we sleep in birds' nests (feathered beds).
In great parts, the history of mankind has been recorded by quills.
Our angels are birds in human clothing.