A single straight line is where John Franzen begins and with each following line, created with a single breath, strives to imitate the line before it. What emerges are unique meditations. Franzen had a creative inner world as a child, moving around Germany until settling in Belgium at six years old. There he spent time in nature and began to study art. After school he worked as a woodcutter and nature-pedagogue, and his life as an independent artist is mainly marked by an intimate, self-paced career. Franzen says in his Artist Statement, “I am not intending to make profane statement; my art is not rooted in political, economic, or ethnic propositions. Rather, it is about the principles of genesis itself and how these principles may be used in a contemplation of a zero state of mind. My works are not loud, noisy and shouting. On the contrary, they listen. They are referential and reverential of life’s original essence. My work is a return to the very beginning, where the purest form of life resides.”