PRACTISING ART

In order to practice Art today, specifically in relation to painting and sculpture, you surely have to take into account that inspiration will be affected by the daily grind.
   
Faced with a blank canvas, when it comes to attempts at drawing, scratching, moulding clay; using history, our history and memories, with all its explosions of images, searching a way through storms, can often appear derisory and sometimes dangerous.

But looking on the bright side, we continue to trace, manipulate and wade through our own geometry of forms and colours to remove ourselves, to live freely and paradoxically, less alone in this lonely activity which does not respond to any of society’s demands.

The study of Art today, is perhaps an essential activity, if not the only one, which allows us to remain in a perfect state of disobedience.  This activity enables the artist to act in a primordial world of wearing thin individuals, saturated with a stream of dictates caused by the cunning virus called the Economy.  In a world overloaded with merchandise, where everyone is an expert, hard working consultants are building their pipe dreams to enable us to have more, on condition that we cease to be ourselves.

Practising Art here and now is all about discovering ourselves beyond our limits.

The history of Art is huge, as is all that we have discovered at the end of this century.

I have been walking hand in hand with Art over the last 30 years, since the vibrant 60’s where we took part in the realisation of vast free-style constructions, tracing sumptuous materials and colours, flavoured with flamboyant thoughts.  I walked hand in hand with Art and occasionally found time to practice it, chasing and beating my way through the vicious jungle of so-called Modern Art, throughout these years, when my job of stone scratcher allowed me to.

When I started, there was a real urgency to create a certain fluidity in drawing, in the battle between black and white but also in this necessity to build, tear and glue together was a need to use materials that were within one’s grasp.  Few works remain from this period that was not completely destroyed.

Then came pastoral images which stemmed from a long glance at the dregs of different areas of the world and planet.  I went back to the trees, or the bits that were left of them, with a determination to capture images that gave an insight into possible inter-connected mutations.  Realism v surrealism, figurative v abstract.

Then the image of the urn, the pot, the vessel and its interior was born.   I returned to the theme of still life, a recurring theme in the history of Art, falling somewhere between tradition and modernity.  Why this image?  Maybe it was to rediscover the sensuality of tracing full rounded figures and also to bring to life different creations, playing with the profusion and continuity of rhythms until saturation point.   Or perhaps the opposite, placing more fluid lines on a rustic setting.

At the moment, I am surprised to find myself working with shapes that cause my urn-inspired work to pale against more abstract work.  This tendency to stick to physical inspiration allows the artist to better focus his attention upon the inner demands of the canvas in order to reinforce the strength and freedom of expression.

Above all, it is clear to me that in reducing the impact of one image, you highlight another.  So what about the abstract and the figurative?  This is a pointless struggle, badly classified.

You paint what you are, or rather what you are attempting to be, by painting.  None of this excludes an eclectic approach nor a certain objectivity for what one produces.

A genuine canvas neither unveils nor resolves anything, it is made to be seen and in the best examples, questioned.

Art is the reflection of an active thought, of a kind of rebellion; its practice is an individual adventure of the mind, body and soul.