explores the profound interplay between inner and outer space, body and soul, and how these dynamics shape human perception, art, and creativity. Drawing on the insights of artists and thinkers from Kandinsky and Paul Klee to Matisse and Max Beckmann, the text examines humans as resonating beings—bodies that carry an “inner sound” and inhabit physical, emotional, and spiritual spaces. It emphasizes the artist’s role in transforming material into meaningful, elevated forms that resonate with viewers, creating immersive, sensual spaces where imagination, emotion, and spirituality converge. The essay argues that true art invites participation, stimulates inner resonance, and bridges the gap between personal experience and universal perception. Ultimately, it is about interpreting reality, creating spaces that engage both body and spirit, and crafting art that allows viewers to enter, reflect, and return, discovering new layers of experience each time.

Vibrations of being: The Art of Resonant Spaces

I am a person. You are a person. Per-sonare, the Latin word for “to sound, to resound,” leads us to the word “person.” This word is found in many languages. From this we hear that we humans are resonating bodies. But like sound, we are not rigid; we are constantly changing, developing, growing, moving. We are on a journey through life. And because we are three dimensional, we have a body enveloping the hollow, resounding space within us. We have a three-dimensional nature.

First let us look at our resonating nature.

A person, therefore is a body which resonates – a sound body. We have an internal „tone“– an internal space.

The space our body inhabits makes us spatial beings. We inhabit spaces. Breathing in and out makes us aware of the interaction between inner and outer space. When we tap our chest, we can feel a vibration, a resonance. Something begins to move within us, our “inner sound.” The concept of space is linked to the space of the soul – the inner space of reality, of what is.  The exchange between body and soul, interior and exterior space, matter and spirit, the world within me and me within the world.

In his “Almanac of the Blue Rider,” Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) said: “The world resonates (within us). It is a cosmos of spiritually active beings.”

Kandinsky explains the inner sound we all carry within us using the example of the alphabet. When we read, we see the images of the letters—and yet we conjure up images within ourselves, behind these letters, each in our own way. This inner resonance is one of the strongest and deepest forms of expression in any composition—it is the sound it creates within you.

The soul of form, of shape is sound – resonance. Forms only come alive when they resonate, vibrate, create music within you – how they echo in our hearts. Paul Klee (1879–1940) said, “We should see with the eyes of the heart.”

When we are determining our subject, who we are, everything has to do with form. Where am I? => Who am I? => Why am I the way I am? Instead of ‘form,’ I could write ‘human being.’ Because we are completely form-oriented. It is us who gives the world its form. We say a tree is a tree. We call the Earth the Earth. We are here to appreciate the world in all its beauty, I recently heard James Hillman called humanity “homo appreciatis”, which I love.

When we stand in the world with our bodies, we can see that we have something in front of us and something behind us. We have a horizon. The light changes from morning to evening.  I move, the world around me moves, everything is in motion. To understand where I stand in this sea of constant change, I need an anchor point. With too much movement, I lose my bearings, feel overwhelmed by the immensity of everything, the chaos of all that is. Humanity's search for an anchor point led to the discovery of the North Star—the only fixed point in the sky. People were aware of sunrise and sunset—which led to the establishment of east and west. Once they found the North Star (north), they could also work out south. This can be seen in Leonardo da Vinci's drawing of man. The axis cross in Leonardo's drawing becomes the world axis of creation—it is the axis that supports humanity and with which we organize the world outside ourselves.

Vitruvian Man by Leonardo da Vinci, ca. 1490 Source: Wikipedia 

As humans we are constantly trying to understand everything, conquer everything, possess everything. To the detriment of the spaces we inhabit and ourselves.

In an interview in the NZZ on Sunday, a Swiss newspaper, (28.12.2025), British/Swiss philosopher Alain de Botton (*1969) said, “One reason for despair is this: we are building a very ugly world. We have forgotten how to create good spaces. Almost no one likes these new neighbourhoods in cities. Urban architecture and design is one of the greatest disasters of the modern world.”

The myth of more, the hero’s story has held our rapt attention since the beginning of industrialisation. However, we can’t all be heroes. The hero is a lonely figure, he needs to go out into the world and kill the dragon, he needs to be better, faster, have more, more, more.

The first mathematical order of space was invented at the beginning of the 15th century by the Florentine architect Fillipo Brunelleschi (1377–1476) by means of central perspective. This shapes our perception of space to this day. In doing so, Brunelleschi contrasted the natural order of space with an artificial order created by us humans. However, we do not appear in this invented space, we cannot enter into it with our bodies. We stand before it, as it were, with the desire to go in. Artists quickly realised images where perspective had been applied in a mathematically correct manner do not invite us in, they remain cool and unwelcoming. The door remains closed. To create something that the viewer found welcoming, artists had to come up with a solution that corresponds to our human nature, because we can only relate to what we know. To what makes us human. Mathematically correct spaces do not engage our full human nature, mathematics is purely spiritual, whereas we are made of spirit and matter – i.e. nature.

Renaissance artists had to find a way of making this artificial space homely, welcoming. Then we can reflect on it, feel it, enter into it with our spirit. In the past artists were satisfied with spaces they had falsified in a “good” sense – allowing the sensual (human) to find a place in them. Artists played with this for centuries— creating sensual spaces we enjoy imagining ourselves in. It is what I do every time I create a work of art: create a sensual space you would like to wander around in.

‘An art image is the unintentional appearance of a space (purposeless) in which the subject who wants to perceive art (you have to want art) would like to be.’
Martin Rabe, *1942

What I want to make clear: an artwork opens up spaces in which there must be a human element.  The viewer is in the image – and that is why the viewer always recreates the image. The viewer is literally moved by it. (Wolfgang Kemp, *1946, art historian). This is because this created space (the artwork) is an elevation of our everyday space, an extension and expansion of our daily experience of space, of nature, of what surrounds us.

As humans, we are constantly searching for “spaces” or “forms” that belong to us/resonate with us. These days most of us consume spaces on a screen. We look into other people´s spaces by means of Instagram, ticktock. However, there is nothing human in computers, our mobile phones; they offer us only machine made, digital spaces. But our lust for spatial experiences, because we are spatial beings, explains the success of the computer game industry. The industry presents us with spaces where we can be, we might want to be, even if we cannot be there with all our senses and our spirit. However, these are not spaces with which we can truly identify on a deeper level because they are machine-made. The Neoplatonist Plotinus (c. 204–270 AD) explained that we can only identify with what we have within us (if the eye were not sun-like, how could it see the sun?). Since we have neither computers nor digital images within us, this type of image cannot resonate within us, creating a connection. Digital images have no spirit or soul.

One of Max Beckmann’s (1884 - 1950) favourite sentences was “Time is the invention of humanity. Space is the palace of the gods.”

It is not the form (material, shape of the letter) that is most important, but the content (the spiritual content, the ‘how’ that lies BEHIND the form). It is not important which words I choose to write to you, but the meaning behind them, how they vibrate in your mind when you read them. It is not important what I paint, but how I paint it. The ‘how’ determines how it will be received by you. You may not find a picture of a kitchen sink particularly interesting. However, if it is painted with feeling, from a deep inner conviction, the everyday is elevated to a whole new level. Henri Matisse (1869 - 1954) said: ‘Is it not the privilege of the artist to make the most humble object valuable, to ennoble it?’

As artists, we possess something invisible — our idea — which we must make visible in the material, in the work. This is the fundamental endeavour of every artist. We have to give the material a form and imbue it with meaning. For this, we must master our craft and have patience and diligence.

But that is not enough. We must be able to elevate the sum of the material, to raise it into an idea embodied in the material.
The other day I was talking to British sculptor Juliette Bigley. This is what she said: “My pieces emerge from a conversation between me as the maker and the material. This begins by modelling in paper, but once I’m working the piece in metal and as it takes on form it starts, also, to have and communicate an opinion of the kind of shape it wishes to be in. Ideas are in there (because they are in me) but they are not the thing which the material is manipulated to represent. Rather, the final piece emerges from that dialogue of action and reaction between maker and object which, for me, is the making process. It is only once the piece is made, finished and, often, photographed that I can explore what it is that I have made and, draw it into relationship with the world of ideas.”

Dr. Sharon Blackie refers to “the imaginal world” the world of images (ideas) including stories, archetypes and the world soul and it lies between our real, physical world and the spiritual world in our minds.  My brother-in-law, stone mason Thomas Laubscher, Head of Stone Center Wunsiedel, thinks there is an image in the stone waiting to be called forth. When the stone mason is in tune with the stone, shadings and colours appear during hammering that harmonise and enhance the stonemason´s idea. The image (idea) waiting to be born, however, is unlimited.

The what we have created (an oil painting, a sculpture) steps into the background, and everything revolves around how we have painted our idea. It is no longer an arrangement of oil pigments on a canvas, but a lush landscape scene that transports us from everyday life into another sphere. It resonates within us.

When we look at Michelangelo’s David, we do not see the many tones of marble. We see David.

Source: Wikipedia

We must elevate natural beauty to artistic beauty — to an artificial, created beauty. By artificial I mean created by humans. Everything else is nature. This act of elevation brings the work closer to us. A work of art, a painting, always consists of three components: colour, form, and movement. Colour reveals the light — including the spiritual light — in a painting. Cézanne’s last words were allegedly: “It’s all about the light.” Form is, as I said, the space, the depth within the picture. And movement, one could say, is humanity — we are always in motion. When we stop moving, we are dead.

As human beings, we try, so to speak, to return to the safety of the womb. We ask questions such as ‘Who am I?’, ‘What should I do?’, ‘What can I hope for?’. We have a longing for something unknown (as the Romantic movement in the 18th century explained – a feeling of being attracted to something, but we do not know what it is).  We have been thrust out of the womb of the natural world with its laws into our own free will. We are not trapped in nature's programme as animals are, we can choose whether we want to have a child, what we do, how we give meaning to our lives. We have free will. Nature resonates within us, through us. We are part of nature. We cannot exclude ourselves from it. But we also have a spirit.

Our inner sound, our inner resonance, is the place where we can discover spirituality in art. The abstract artists of Der Blaue Reiter sought a harmonious balance between what appears in thought (in our inner space, our perception) and what we can borrow from in nature.

In order to establish this connection between our inner eye and the outside world, we need a personal inner connection. Kandinsky said “Those who have eyes and ears for nature will be rewarded with inspiration.” Caspar David Friedrich (1774 - 1840) said “Those who do not have nature within themselves should not seek it in the outside world.”

From an artistic point of view, it would have been more important not to conquer reality (or what we consider to be reality), but to interpret it. This would have allowed us to remain part of the process. The interpretation of reality always arises from the immediate mental awareness of living events. However, I often feel as humans we have lost our commitment to ourselves. It is now possible to destroy humanity and the planet on a grand scale. We have become our own most dangerous enemies.

But to return to the spaces we create before we blow them up.

When I work from an artistic point of view and interpret reality, it is, so to speak, my ‘task’ as an artist to create order out of the chaos of everything. A work of art is a self-contained universe in which each part revolves around itself and the others, as in the planetary system, according to Romano Guardini in his work ‘On the Nature of a Work of Art’ (1948). It needs nothing outside itself to ‘live’ and have an effect on you, the viewer. One of my core beliefs as an artist, is that a work of art is made by people for people. A challenging statement these days.

I recently studied a narrative psychology course on ‘Finding Ourselves in Fairytales’ at the Pacifica Graduate Institute with Dr Sharon Blackie. I have always loved stories, and since I have been studying them more closely, I have become aware of their similarities to works of art. Fairytales are essentially human – created by normal people to make everyday life easier. We are not just creatures who like to explore spaces, but also storytellers – we tell stories about the spaces we have found, conjured up and imagined. Like a work of art, stories stimulate the imagination. Like a work of art, stories take the chaos of everything and transform it into something, a form, we can deal with. Stories are not fixed.

Charcoal drawing "The Woman who turned into a Fox" Sibylle Laubscher, 2024

A work of art should always leave room for the viewer to complete the picture. A painting in which everything is said is ‘painted to death’ and will not stimulate the imagination, leaving no room for interpretation or ideas. We need to interpret our reality. But there are many different realities, as Hans Blumenberg (1920 - 1996) writes in ‘Realities in Which We Live’.

To conclude: we have now established that there is an outer space – that which we can see, feel and touch – and an inner space – the ideas, feelings and emotions that arise within us. It is the interplay of these that create interesting and evocative spaces in a work of art. It is not enough to copy nature, the outside space we absorb with our senses. We also need to be aware of our inner space, the vibrations the world makes within our souls. We need sensual spaces that resonate within us. This idea influences my art practice significantly. I want to give you a feeling of a space you can enter into, leave reality behind, feed your soul, nourish your spirit and return to again and again, discovering new experiences in the space every time. It is not about escapism, but allowing you to hear the entire universe in a work of art (Kandinsky).

© Sibylle Laubscher