“A painting is like the surface of a VISION”

    - LETTERS FROM THE ARTIST-

In this first letter I’d like to share my reflexions on the Italian movement of ‘Chiaroscuro’

The bright tones bear witness to a truth revealed to me by grace.

Like a rise to the summit where everything is clear - everything is distinguished and discerned.

Like the transparency of a childish state of mind, and its symbol of innocence. The truth is luminous not by its content but by its revelation. It brings clarity and a new perspective, a possibility to rise.

Then the darker tones – the midnight blues, these nuances which I cannot do without when I speak the language of pictorial art.

Darkness and its accomplice light; the mystery of their complexity like a risky or loving relationship. Providence brought them together, for better and for worse.

To what extent do I unmask myself through chiaroscuro?

But I don't unmask myself at all, since I'm not a spectator. But maybe you feel the desire to be unmasked through a canvas? Yes, please remain passive, and let me do the action!

In other words ; please let go and leave it to me;  and let's go back to chiaroscuro…..

But that doesn’t mean anything, since the color chart is not Master,

but the gesture!

The gesture I apply; this attack on a blank canvas, without fear,

The unbridled gesture is therefore the master, the intuition which leads it like an innate choreography, as virile as it is self-controlling.

But no ! But no! You have to control your gesture!

Too late.

I have already left my will to master everything,

I have left my will; to submit to another power, beyond the will.

And the pen moves on a white sheet, the fingers hammer a melodic line on the piano and the paint bursts onto my cotton canvas.

And the very action – the gesture in its sweet madness – proves the other masters WRONG!

And this is how I can bear witness to another space,

There, where conformism and doctrine has no place.

Only intuitive but divine gestures

Gently led by the feminine hand

Into the irresistible darkness

I mix the shades

With mastered clarity

With sincerity and pleasure,

Your Artist

“Art is a philosophical thought”

- LETTERS FROM THE ARTIST - 

I understand art in its specificity and not as a species.

Art is first distinguished from nature, then from science and finally from profession.

Art is distinguished from nature from the point of view of causality.

It is a production of freedom  - unlike nature which produces mechanically.

There are other relationships than reality that the mind can grasp and which are primary, such as chance, illusion, the fantastic, the dream.

These various species are brought together and reconciled in a genre which is "sur reality".

The main principles of surrealism are:

·      Surrealism is like a “pure” physical automatism allowing one to express the reality of one’s thoughts without any censorship.

·      It is based on the exploration of the dream world in the hope or mission of reconnecting Man with his interiority.

·      When I believe to represent myself in one of the forms or one of the paths of the surrealists, it is through my automatic writing. Because this mode of expression wants to give voice to deep desires, repressed by society. The surrealist object thus obtained has the first effect of disconnecting the mind, therefore to prove it wrong. I prove my mind wrong because I disconnect it from an agreed reality.

Surrealism is based on the belief in the superior reality of certain forms of associations previously neglected, in the omnipotence of dreams in the disinterested play of thought.

In my surrealism I allow words to surface fantasies that morality or aesthetic sense would prevent from writing.

Further on…

The world of dreams and the world of reality are one. The dream is a permanent attitude towards life and like a revolution, a source of freedom since the dream allows the unconscious desire and chance (hazard in French).

Chance is an objective!

Among us believers - we will prefer the word providence or divine providence to the word chance.

Regardless, this remains an objective among hasty or incredulous surrealists; the objective is the liberation of the spirit in the social struggle for intellectual emancipation.

For us Christians the objective is the liberation of the spirit for an emancipation to encounter God, his divinity and his HUMANITY. The path is identical because the common objective is the liberation of the mind from all these constraints or these erroneous interpretations.

But the final goal (or objective) for us is the divinity of the spirit to meet Christ.

For us believers, all inspiration is divine. So in this we do indeed share a kind of divinity with and through the holy spirit which is the creation of the father of this loving relationship between the father and the son and human beings.

How can art contribute to social transformation and human emancipation?

I play in the emancipation of the spirit to allow my contemporary through my artworks  (signs, colors or tones) successive to the obligation to be an actor.

Through my art I put them face to face without giving instructions or doctrine, simply giving free rein to their imaginations, sensations or emotions.

Afterwards, if this experience allows them to be transported or guides them on the path to a certain social emancipation, that is not my object.

This is where the whole dimension of creation takes place. I not only create a path but above all I create the dimensional desire of an inner search different from an impressionist or a cubism etc.

I create a world of elevated reality, that is to say a sur reality.

I don't discover it, because this surrealist current exists already. I box it in, I get into it. But through my experiences I deepen it and I open in this surrealism a new path which can lead to the spiritual.

To be continued ….

Sincerely

Your Artist