The ancient megaliths in Britain and Brittany have always appealed to my imagination.
Not only because of their mystery (why and how were they erected and by whom?) and the profound sense of history they bring to the landscape, but also because of the simple, robust beauty of their forms.
So, a couple of years ago, my wife Donna and I decided to spend our summer holiday in Great Britain to go camping and stone-hunting (Donna a little bit less enthusiastic than I - she thinks it is somewhat tiring to wait half an hour at every site till I have photographed every possible stone from every possible angle…).

Antwerp - Calais by car, then the night-ferry (cheapest solution) to Dover to arrive in standard British weather.
Driving the whole night long through the downpour, sometimes interspersed with a healthy thunderstorm, and always remembering to keep driving on the left.
Half past five a.m., and at last we arrive at Stonehenge.
Nauseous with sleep, we stumble out of the car and into a bleak, grey morning with not even the faintest strand of mist to create something of an atmosphere. The monument is imprisoned behind a wire-mesh, a lonely warder in the distance walks behind the stones and provides some sense of dimension.
Not exactly the vibrant centre of cosmic energy one should expect, but when we returned at the end of our trip, this time at noon, it was possibly even worse: whole busloads of visitors standing in queue to walk almost in single file past the monument. Don't stand still, there is someone behind you!
That time, we didn't even leave our car.

It goes without saying that, during that same holiday, we did discover lots of lesser-known sites where we could sit on our own to muse and dream. And photograph every possible stone from every possible angle.

Moreover, it was the first time I had visited places where one really finds oneself immersed in an atmosphere of Celtic and pre-Celtic lore, spiritualism and art. And I fell immediately in love with the rhythms and patterns of Celtic knotwork-decoration. On ancient or even simply old crosses, of course, but also the more commercialised artwork on T-shirts and postcards, on signboards and in books.
The more intricate the design, the more I liked it, and a real revelation was a visit to the British Museum in London, to see the real stuff, being the one page on display of the Lindisfarne Gospels, showing a mastery that is even more impressive when you realize the actual materials the scribes had to work with.

Next thing, I came upon the book 'Knotwork - the secret method of the scribes' by Aidan Meehan, and the following couple of rainy days were spent giving myself a headache by sitting hunched up in the tent for hours on end, drawing grids and trying to construct interlaced borders and plaitwork panels with continuous paths.
Of course, there are only a limited number of ways to interlace two ribbons, but even from the beginning I always tried not to copy the examples - ancient or modern - but to find my own interpretations.
Shortly, my little collection of books on Celtic-Art grew, with Meehan's 'A Beginner's Manual', Courtney Davis' 'Celtic Borders and Decoration' and the obligatory, unsurpassed 'Celtic Art - The Methods of Construction' by George Bain: complete, comprehensive and a lot more down to earth than Aidan Meehan.
To be honest, after a youthful period of being interested in things occult and mystical, nowadays I am more attracted by the scientifical world-view - there is still enough wonder and enchantment there! I came into Celtic art from an aesthetical point of view, not a metaphysical one.
Of course I am influenced by legends, myths and symbols, but I am not exactly an adept of 'new age' beliefs.
I recognise the symbolic, narrative and aesthetical value of the grail for many people, but I don't believe in its actual existence.
That is why I have some difficulty with the books of Aidan Meehan, and with editions of 'Celtic Mandala's' you're supposed to meditate upon to conquer despair and desillusionment, or the like…
Yet, even I can't always contain myself, and some summers ago Donna took one of her rare but always special pictures of me, playing the djembe in honour to the setting sun amid the alignments at the splendid megalithic site of Saint Just in Brittany: imposing three meter high standing stones, one of which our dog is just busy, rather disrespectfully, claiming as his own…

My reservations concerning 'new age' philosophy notwithstanding, the actual making of my drawings has a certain meditative and calming quality. After making some sketches, I draw the first draft in pencil, making use of ruler and compasses.
And erasers.
Lots of erasers.
When I am satisfied with the result, I trace the whole design in black felt pen, completing the interlacings.
That done, I go to a copy-centre to make some high-quality copies. Because the toner forms a slight elevation on the paper, it is a lot easier for colouring than the original.
I use the finest possible brush and 'Ecoline', water based transparent inks that exist in many colours and are rather easy to use.
The whole procedure for one drawing takes about a month.
Countless hours of patient, necessarily calm and restful work. (Ask Donna how calm and restful I am when I accidentally drop my brush on a nearly finished drawing.).

Fortunately, even I have discovered lately the intriguing world of the PC and its fantastic possibilities for colouring my drawings, so nowadays I don’t get bouts of Guinness-book-worthy high bloodpressure anymore because of falling brushes.
Nowadays I get them because of crashing programs.

But mostly, it is not only great fun, but also very satisfying to sit at my desk with our old faithful dog at my feet, creating elaborate patterns and searching solutions for problems concerning interlacing ribbons, plants, people or animals in an elegant, or at least acceptable way.

That same old dog of ours was also the reason we have not been able to cross the Channel any more for some years, so my main source of inspiration came - and still comes - comes from French Brittany (Tongue in cheek, it is very similar to Britain but the food is better).

But I don't restrict myself by looking only for purely Celtic themes.
One of my favorite urban-fantasy-writers is Charles De Lint, who brews wonderful mixes of Celtic myth with its Native Canadian counterpart.
And also the continuing epic of Jean Auel's 'Earth Children' has provided me with themes. (Incidentally, I think that my drawings of couples making love are not without medieval precedent: what to think of the so-called wrestling men who are pulling each others rigid beards - Freud would have had a field-day!)
Some of my ideas grow from other drawings, some come from texts, like 'Every stone is Light (slowed down) tied in a knot, and Light is every stone's dream', which I found in a song by Stephen Kent's group Trance Mission and which I transformed in a barely readable calligraphy-knot.

 

Apart from that, music plays an important role in my life.
I listen to a lot of different kinds of music from a lot of different cultures and countries and I think it could be a lesson for some of our fellow-men of a less tolerant persuasion that musicians from totally different backgrounds can come together in an atmosphere of mutual respect and create wonderful musical hybrids.
Afro Celt Sound System, Baka Beyond, the Breton/Berber groups Ta˙fa and Thalweg, Sheila Chandra, Tabitha MacKenzie, the Hungarian Mŕrta Sebestyén, Breton contrabass-genius Henri Texier, in Brittany based Greek singer Elisa Vellia, and especially Loreena McKennitt's 'The Mask and Mirror' are, among uncountable others, for me witnesses that respecting and exploring each other's culture can be an enrichment for us all.

It is this desire for a multicultural world where there is as much place for the rather purist forms of thinking and expression, as for a peaceful blending of elements from all over this one world we all inhabit, that I also try to express in my artwork.
Hence the incorporation of African elements, Arab interwoven patterns and Tuareg silverwork-decorations, in some of my drawings.