Intitially I intended to paint the Acts of the Apostles in only 20 pictures as a sample of my biblical painting technique. And this is what I did. However after much reflection and after fully absorbing the Revelation of St John with much difficulty into my mind, I came to the important realization that the Acts of the Apostles is actually a much more important cornerstone of the “New Testament”. So I could not with any good reason throw out my original work and insert the already completed 20 pictures in this 250 work.
What was particularly significant was my feeling for this story before I knew it more intensively, that in fact in my artistic intentions, great caution would be needed when making singlehanded attempts at analysis. It is also filled with the mood of a far-off journey and with plenty of electricity and contradictions that could be easily set in futuristic paintings but which confront the spectator with puzzling enigmas. As I am familiar with the Aegean and have sailed these kind of routes at least twenty times on small merchant ships (when I was a student) the landscapes are in my mind and thus easily transposed. It is also becoming more and more clear to me that Paul’s Epistles cannot be explained without the Acts of the Apostles among other things.
A change in the simple and polished way in which Jesus transmitted his message was so distorted by Paul that I would have wished that Jesus really had risen again to take the sword of dogma from the hands of this intractable fanatic.
This characteristic is that which makes the Acts of the Apostles important, and even to be considered as a flagship because the Christian church of today would break apart without its dogma.