Oil painting: The Encounter - Teppich: Margarith | DeepPurple

Oil painting, not hanging on a wall, but placed in front of a valuable rug - that is an exciting bringing together of two works of art.
New harmonies arise.

In a special exhibition in Augsburg 2015 under the title "linked", paintings by Wolfgang Lettl were combined with rugs by Jürgen Dahlmanns (RUG STAR).

The Encounter

First of all: how do I get the idea to divide a bridge in the middle without any sense at all and to place the two halves opposite each other, moreover in the middle of the water, so that the people (how did they get there, I wonder?) cannot get to each other?
Is there a meaning behind it?
I never start from what a picture should say, only from formal ideas. Bridges have always been favourite motifs for me and I have also enjoyed painting water, and if the connection to the solid ground, a riverside road, for example, has bothered me, I have simply left it out and let the bridge in all its majestic form be reflected in the middle of the water. It was during an attempt at such a composition that I had the idea for the design described above and I think I have succeeded in creating the picture.
I believe I have experienced that every picture must fulfil its own laws and that these laws can still make no sense to our superficial experience, but that a deeper, more profound meaning often emerges when we examine and question them for a longer period of time, for example when painting. Then the bridge, which was supposed to serve the meeting of two banks, becomes a parable for the fact that a meeting can also not take place, due to human failure, for example, because the foundations are wrong.

Such mishaps never happen to our technicians, or so rarely that I can't remember any such or similar case. In human relationships, on the other hand, the breakdowns are probably more frequent than the success of the relationships with each other. Not only between individuals but between ethnic groups, systems of thought, world views and denominations. And these breakdowns are so difficult or even impossible to deal with because the foundations were already planned wrongly.