It was about understanding that painting, the person behind it. Kandinsky. But it cannot be grasped with the mind. Hearing colours? The attempt to copy it failed – yet the gift remained of having learned a great deal. Perhaps it was the hills and valleys, the landscape, that shaped the outside world – or that steel-blue sky on summer church holidays. Or even the mist rising from the stream on bitterly cold but clear nights. Who knows whether it wasn't also the lifelessness and lovelessness in outer reality that set the search in motion.

Something imitated this exploration for more. No term exists that describes it exactly. What it was and is – a search, an exploration, a pursuit, a following – an attempt at tracking something down.

Then everything rested – for many years. Forgotten in the cellar: small tools of expression and of showing.

In the years between came the gift of this surprising perspective, a possible course of action that led to an unexpected career, one that may now be coming to its end.

And then – then came the day a brush, meant to be cleaned of too much excess, outlined the likeness of a person on paper. Then the journey continued, in bursts, recurring again and again. Accompanied by doubts and contradictions that constantly had to be kept small, by rearing questions of meaning, relevance and legitimacy, of the right to exist and of rightfulness.

Along winding paths – out of impulses, out of thoughts, sensations – out of painful sorrow too. Always carried within: this search, and the attempt to truly see …

So one cannot help but quote the man who still exerts this fascination today – Max Beckmann:

“Form-giving is redemption …!” (Friday, 2 May 1941)

And whatever else may still come …

Uwe Mühlhäußer lives and works in Nuremberg. Since 2000 he has worked full-time as a photographer. www.uwe-muehlhaeusser.de