I had several wishes for this painting. Firstly, it had to unite the room it was to be displayed in, creating space and light, joy and calm. Secondly I wanted to capture a special feeling for the Health Education Department CVU in Nordjylland. Something common for everyone employed in health professions.

Each group of profession at the Health Education Department CVU in Nordjylland embraces with care and presence all of life's stages - from the beginning of life, to development, decay and death. Life begins with growth, therefore the plant buds on the left side. Life is closely related to water in all aspects, therefore the water and the light - and the decay, the fungus, which are not feeding on the same sources as plants, but thrive even in the dark, shows how something beautiful, fruitful and useful also comes out of aging, despite the physical decay. For that reason, there is a timeline throughout the painting, where the large water-filled, yet blank canvas in the middle, represent the part of your life where you take care of others rather than, as in the two small canvases, are being the recipient of care, when you are in the morning and evening of life.

To create a sense of calm, I have in my composition sent kind thoughts to the Chinese landscape paintings, where emptiness is an essential part of the painting: "Especially Chinese landscape paintings may be mostly empty space, with mountains and clouds trailing off into misty distance. The emptiness in the painting is just as important, or more important, than the painted part: It represents the Tao," ("Comments on the Tao Te Ching" the D.C. Lau translation - Penguin Books, 1963).

It was during my reading of Benjamin Hoff's "Winnie the Pooh and his Tao" that I became aware of of this appealing way of layouting a canvas. Benjamin Hoff explains: "What is it about the Taoist paintings of landscapes which seem so consoling in so many different people? The emptiness! The room that has not been filled. What is it about the newly fallen snow, clean air and clean water? Or good music? As Claude Debussy said: 'Music is in the space between the notes'."