The story or parable of the sower and reaper is often depicted in the visual arts. A reaper is the eternal companion of the sower. There is in fact a certain co-operation between the two. After all, one completes the work the other has begun. In earlier prints the sower is regularly depicted with a devilish harvester by his side. A man with a scythe who forges his own devilish plans. These are not always in sync with the rhythm of nature and are sometimes an attack on life.

The scattering of the seed

The Bible story The Parable of the Sower is about ’the scattering of the seed’ that symbolizes fertility, growth, energy and the spreading of a positive message. In The Parable, account is taken of the failure of the seed. The Parable of the Sower and Soils series refer to the drama of the shooting at the church in the American town of Charleston (South Carolina) where the minister read the Parable of the Sower to a group of worshipers as the attacker entered the church.

La Divina Commedia

The epic The Divine Comedy (La Divina Commedia) by the Florentine poet Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) offers its own perspectives on the theme of ’the sower and evil’. In the ninth chasm of the eighth circle of “The Malebolge,” the “pouches of evil” of the Inferno, suffer the Schismatics or the Impostors. These impostors are also known as “Sowers of Discord” or “Sowers of strife and dissension.”

In conversation with the devil

In the Rijksmuseum you can see a beautiful etching by the Amsterdam engraver Caspar Luyken (1672-1708) entitled Pastor in conversation with the devil in front of the entrance of a church. The Polish philosopher Leszek Kołakowski (1927-2009) wrote a collection of short stories entitled Conversations with the devil. He asks whether there is a patent solution to deal with evil once and for all. An anti-devil for every devil seems the dialectical recipe.

Parable of the Sower is a series of 14 works of art created in the period 2017-2020