lastest works
Always ambushed. Sensations, emotions, thoughts. I wake too early, far too early, for words or images to dam the constant flood. Sometimes it comes. Sometimes it doesn’t.
uncategorized
I like the series I make in a kind of strange frenzy. I like the small canvas too, the slow tending of it. These here are my only children, my happy orphans, flashes of lightning. All I own is the power to keep them safe.
dancers
I watch contemporary dance with a sort of awe. Bodies folding into a storm, twisting like a river, branches in midair, suspended flight, reaching up. A series I will never tire of.
dummies
Dummies stand in the in-between. Not quite human, not yet machine.
No one sees them. No soul, but our faces. Our poses, sometimes eerily exact. The ancient statue showed the living hero. The dummy is the individual erased by the crowd.
good old days
One day a friend sent me old photographs. Found them in a trunk in some attic. Everyday scenes, rural France, the sixties. People with little and yet—happy. I reinterpreted a few.
idle angels
The world burns. I wonder what angels are doing. Why they don’t whisper to the powerful. I picture them wandering, among the ordinary, bored. They do nothing. They say nothing. Disillusioned.
intimacy
My home is solitude ringed by people, my intimacy, my inland empire. There, the other is a welcome intruder, politely shown to the door. Nothing more is needed for happiness. Only there can I watch the world. And watching the world is the one of the two things that justifies us.
last century
I watch the old every day. People of the last century. Their habits unchanged: alcohol, cigarettes, heavy bodies, endless regrets. Living inside their century with a sigh. I hold a strange affection for them. For the young who just. do the same, only disgust.
levitaters
People tell me to meditate for my sake. I almost never can. I envy those who grow lighter. Who rise three centimeters first, then drift into the blank. Since I cannot join them, I paint them. As I paint my dancers.
politically correct
When I show my work to someone close, they say: No one will hang that in a living room. Especially the scenes that trouble, the ones you’re not supposed to show if you don’t want to break the party mood. At best, they could be hidden in a book, the spine visible on a shelf. Conscience appeased. None of what I do would mean anything if I didn’t make these images.
religious art
Religion has always given space to art. From Egypt to now. That time is gone. I dislike art-for-art, art-for-tax-breaks. Religious art is thick with meaning, with the present, with openings. Religious art is for everyone. By nature.
tribute to josephine hopper
It was Edward Hopper’s wife who taught me how to prompt images. Her meticulous notes on his paintings. So exact, so fine, that when you read them, the paintings bloom larger. She wrote like a poem. Reading her is seeing, smelling, touching, tasting.
walkers
Walking is the ultimate dance, humble and everyday. It expresses who we are, deeply and since the dawn of time. Walking is what we have in common with animals. Walking is a form of meditation. We share this too with animals. And we forget it. By forgetting to be aware of walking, we forget our animal nature, our nature as living beings.
