The man on the picture is painter Jean Leppien.

I (Daphne) am the young woman, around 28 years old back then, and in the third year of my studies at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague.

The setting is Italy, in a small village where I have spent most of my summers since I was 14.

I was impressed by Jean, always felt a bit timid because he was a famous abstract painter with Bauhaus roots and painterly gravitas while at that time I wasn’t that much drawn to the abstract. 

This afternoon my mother and I were invited for drinks at his holiday home when something out of the ordinary happened. 

I was looking at a painting of Jean hanging on the stone wall of his living room.  A few concentric circles. If I remember well, soft white, yellow, golden and blue colors. Something a bit like this one:

Suddenly I felt that I was communicating with the painting, about 10 cm above the top of my head! 

Better said, the painting was communicating with me!

The ‘data stream’ was almost tangible, similar to feeling the movement of water under the surface in a bubble bath…

I was flabbergasted as this stream of information entered and an exchange happened. It was a language beyond words. 

I don’t know why, but asked Jean for a catalogue of his work. It felt urgent. I wanted to see more.

Looking at all of his works, turning page after page, all the pages of paintings, I understood them, saw a different layer to them.

Multidimensionally, in each work was an entrance and an exit, an exit which felt more like an escape.

I was swept of my feet and deeply moved by this experience. I stuttered and told Jean what I was experiencing. He was deeply moved as well and said “ that’s it. You’ve seen it”. A (he)art connection was forged that afternoon between the master painter and an art student. 

“Abandonner le monde des objets et les apparences, pour rendre visible un monde existant autant et plus que l’univers matériel qui nous entoure: le monde de l’esprit”

Jean Leppien

“To abandon the world of objects and appearances, in order to make visible a world existing as much, and more, than the material universe that surrounds us: the world of the spirit.”

Jean Leppien

PS: My website designer asked me, Feb. 2026, to find a title for this article for my new blog like section/prikbord. 

What immediately came was ‘ close encounters…”. I wondered why this specific title with the sci-fi connotation… Just now I was looking for a link to Jean’s website and found that the series of these circles was called “UFO-series”!

Such a lovely confirmation of this remarkable connection between us!