Lately, I've been feeding myself differently.
I've been going to galleries and museums more often.
Reading about art, about artists, about the way they create, think, search, doubt, transform.
I have been going to a Sofar show last week, listening to these poets/ singers/ musicians singing in front of 30 stangers in a tiny shop lent by the owner for the occasion/the moment and the love of music and humman connexion. There was something so pure in that.
Something fresh, true and moving.
Something that brought me back to the source.
At the same time, I've been reading Matisse, especially his words in Jazz, and also Lettres à un jeune poète by Rainer Maria Rilke.
And little by little, I can feel all of this working on me.
It feels as though I am educating my eye again.
My brain too.
But also my heart.
I am filling myself with the language of art : colours, textures, negative space, energy, big paintings, ideas, sensations.
Artists I have seen in Sydney the past weeks. From left to Right.
Paul Connor, Oliver Sin, Rita Sala, Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri.
Gajin Fujita, Yaritji Young, Jooha Jeon, Vernon Ah Kee, Judy Watson
With beauty, questions, fragments.
With the kind of nourishment that does not always produce something immediately, but quietly prepares the ground.
Because I think this is what I am trying to do right now : prepare the ground.
Not to make work that sells (well eventually at one point, but not as a purpose)
Not to make work that pleases.
Not to make work according to trends, colours of the year, or whatever the art world or social media may reward.
But to make work that comes from somewhere honest.
To create, first, for myself.
As a need.
As a way to let something out that has been sitting quietly inside me for a long time.
And for now at least, without thinking about whether it can be sold.
I am also trying to understand what I want to say in painting.
If there is something I want to say at all.
What story I want to tell.
Or perhaps not even a story : perhaps just a feeling, a force, a tension, a trace.
More and more, painting feels less like "making images" and more like pouring my guts onto a blank canvas.
That may sound a little dramatic.
But it is honestly the closest thing to what I feel what art is.
Telling you about this process matters to me for several reasons.
First : because it helps me document the journey.
It forces me to put words on what I am going through, and that in itself is part of the work.
Then because transparency feels important to me.
And maybe honesty is the first step towards making real art.
And also because I know some of you may be going through your own shift/shit :)
Maybe not in painting.
Maybe not even in art.
But in the act of making something more personal, more truthful, more alive in your life.
I know I love reading about these moments in other people's lives : the in-between, the uncertainty, the internal turning point, the season where something old no longer fits but something new is not fully there yet.
So perhaps some of you will be curious to follow mine too.
Over these past few weeks, here are some of the things that have stayed with me.
I made a few mood boards, and they revealed something quite clearly : the textures, colours and atmosphere I’m naturally drawn to, and the kind of painting I feel pulled towards.
Food for my thoughs: moodboards.
I also started drafting a kind of artistic statement, to understand more clearly what I may want to express, what I may want to leave behind, what I may want to pass on. Especially to my kids. Believe it or not, it’s all about women :) and the representation of them through time, art and history.
And then there are the words that have hit me deeply.
"A new painting must be a unique thing, a birth bringing a new figure into the representation of the world through the human mind. The artist must bring all his energy, his sincerity, and the greatest modesty to set aside during his work the old clichés that come so easily to the hand and can suffocate the little flower that never comes as one expects it." Matisse
"Art does not reproduce the visible; it makes visible." Paul Klee
Another idea has also stayed with me :
not painting a woman by looking at her, but painting from the memory of the strength and movement she left behind.
"Painting must escape the control of the intellect" Francis Bacon
"Go into yourself and explore the depths from which your life springs."Rainer Maria Rilke
There have been other signs too, smaller ones, but no less meaningful.
An artist named Vayu I visited in his gallery gifted me a poem, just like that.
It was so spot on that it now lives on my desk, where I can read it again and again.
Note for later: gift art randomly to strangers.
I've also been researching art studios, because finding a new studio space will be one of my next steps after my holidays in Europe to see my family and recharge.
I have booked museums, spotted galleries, and made little notes of things I want to see during my upcoming trip to France and Morocco.
So far, this is how these last few weeks have been unfolding.
A lot of looking.
A lot of reading.
A lot of listening.
A lot of feeling.
A lot of quiet preparation.
Not much certainty yet.
But something is moving.
I'll keep sharing it with you as I go.
Clémentine