Until Luis German Ardila lost his ability to form sentences, he never knew exactly what he wanted to say.

He'd made many false starts before an auto accident robbed him of language: philosopher, theologian, architect, realist painter in the style of his 17th-century idol, Diego Velázquez.

But after the wreck in 1986, Ardila began to think more deeply about ways to depict eternal truths. Since then, his creativity has burst forth in more than 2,000 paintings - mostly densely layered, allegorical oils - depicting subjects biblical and Babylonian, ideas from Greek myth and creation stories that cross cultures.

The 57-year-old artist has long since recovered his ability to speak, though only in English and Spanish; French, German, and his smattering of Hebrew remain behind the psychic barrier. A conversation with him touches on anything from the way the mind receives signals to the legendary philosopher's stone - not just the one that turned base metals to gold, but a symbol leading toward enlightenment.

"Having no words changed my conception of life," he says, sitting in the Mint Hill home he shares with his mother, wife and three children. "The word makes the universe; that's how we construct relationships. But when words were taken away, the conception of things that are invisible - but real - became important to me. I began to relate to things through intuition."

A journey that never ends

Ardila has always been a wanderer, both physically and metaphysically.

He came from his native Bogotá to Miami as an elementary schooler, accompanying a mother who had been a painter - a rare thing for a woman - in 1950s Colombia. (His father, one of the country's early commercial pilots, died of heart failure.)

At 16, he says, he began to study philosophy back in Colombia, with the idea of becoming a priest. At 18, he switched to architecture. "The discipline of organizing space was interesting to me," says Ardila, who became a draughtsman in a Colombian firm. "But I found that people who had money had no feeling for (design), and people who had a feeling for architecture had no money. So I started over again."

This time, after getting a master's degree in painting, he set his feet on a road that has kept him busy for 35 years. He traveled around Europe, looking at art in museums in Italy, Spain, Holland. He studied the work of Pablo Picasso, the other great influence upon him. (Picasso mastered realistic drawing and painting techniques before moving into abstractions.)

And in 1986 came the wreck. A driver smashed a parked car where Ardila sat, waiting for a girl friend. The subsequent brain surgery, he recalls, took nine hours.

"When I woke up, I didn't have words. It was hard to learn to speak again. But not having words gives you what people who do yoga would like to have: a clear mind."

That allowed Ardila to tap into his subconscious as a painter, as he does today.

"I'm not the artist who will draw a perfect cat, where you see the splendid eyes and a full set of whiskers," he says. "I know the principles of composition, but I start with philosophy. When the universe was created, something that was in chaos ended in cohesion. A painting is like a small universe: It starts as chaos, and you try to create a cosmos by the end of it."

He means that literally. He approaches a blank canvas without a detailed plan, covering it with brushstrokes for a layered background. As he does so, "I let my subconscious take over. If I impose a theme at the beginning, I fail. My pictures all end up different from what I thought they'd be."

They're allegorically rich, filled with symbols that go back as far as French cave paintings. "I think of those as prehistoric classrooms," he says. "They made rituals to get the men brave enough to take spears in their hands and go fight the animals.

"The Greeks and Hebrews and Arabs and Egyptians all created iconography to explain what reality is. That's what I do: I try to show realities that are invisible ... For me, the Earth is a living creature. The universe itself has consciousness."

History in perspective

His computer teems with images of Mesopotamian bulls, Greek minotaurs and mermaids found on churches built during the Middle Ages. He makes unusual connections: When he discusses his painting of the Annunciation, where Gabriel "transmits the Holy Spirit into the Virgin Mary," he muses upon the modern "miracle" of a telephone signal bouncing off an unseen satellite to arrive at our ears.

Yet we need not interpret every line or object correctly to enjoy Ardila's work.

"I was immediately attracted to the first piece, one I saw about the Holy Grail," says Linda Stegall, a fellow member of the Mint Hill Arts collaborative. "I didn't know all the content, but it appealed on a visceral level to me. I loved the vibrant color and scale and form; everything in it was balanced, nothing out of place.

"Luis is quiet and unassuming, very humble for a man with talent such as his. I took a class from him in linoleum block carving, and even though I was the only person in the class, he taught me patiently. The more you talk to him, the more you find out how intelligent he is."

Finding a sense of peace

For all his intellectual restlessness, Ardila has a settled quality about him now.

After roaming America from New York to Santa Fe, trying to find a place to work and live, he was en route from Miami to Washington, D.C., when he visited a cousin in Charlotte in 2008. "I stayed a week and thought, 'This is where I want to spend the rest of my life,' " he remembers.

Once he found a suitable house, his brothers purchased it, so he could look after their mother, Araceli. There he expanded his family with wife, Paula: Their youngest boy was born just before Christmas. Paula is still learning English, he says, and the fact that he had to do so again in his 30s makes him helpful to her.

Now he contemplates the knowledge he has absorbed from everywhere: the eloquent walls of churches and museums, the French philosopher who invited him to study with her years ago at her house in Burgundy, the Colombian priest who taught him to use a pendulum to find water. ("His goal was to help me develop my senses in that way," says Ardila. "You have to silence yourself to make that happen.")

And he remains modest. He says he doesn't know "if my works will last in time," and he half-jokingly remarks that "some people buy my pictures because I've done a blue painting, and it matches their curtains and their blue rug."

But for those who look, the symbols and deeper meanings will always be there.

"Taking a picture into your home is like taking a friend into your home," Ardila says. "Sooner of later, he will start speaking to you. He will help you see the world differently. That's my hope."