I spent the weekend under the spell of glass and copper. My sensitive perception is overwhelmed by the surfaces, the temperatures, the hardnesses, the smells, the volumes, the shapes, the sounds of any object around me. My synesthetic mind perceives some objects more concise, honest, accurate than others. My two close friends, intimate and admired partners in life are he, the glass, and she, the copper.
Touching glass always makes me realise this life is a dream. Glass is nothing for the vision, hard, sharp, cold, smooth person to the skin. Only today, friends as we are, he cut me in four places when he lost his temper. He lets you close to him though. Looking sideways into a plane of glass you can see into the depths of his eyes, the color of ferrous oxide, the color he shares with his twin, the other seemingly clear liquid, water. You can get to know him and he will tell secrets, if you care, he tells you about airbubbles, chips and cracks, all flaws of his apparently perfect and shining soul. I love glass.
Watching copper always makes me realise this life is a dream. Copper is one of the most self-confessive, reactive, honest, dazzling person I know. Whatever happens to her, she bleeds her brown blood, cries her turquoise tears and laughs her purple laugh without reserve. If she can though, she shines, shines brighter than gold, shines warmer than the sunset, shines as long as she can. Later on, come oxygen, come time, come acids or alkaline poisons to mar her body, she doesn’t care. She proudly stands up after all this, lets you read her life from the lines on her and carries her colorful beauty until she thins to oblivion. I love copper.
After months of research, decisions, experiments, chemistry, failures and fascinating results, I am finally starting to have an idea of what I want and how to achieve it. On Friday all materials arrived and I spent the weekend getting ready for some serious painting. I now have in my hands what I call a reflective and responsive base.
The way I want to paint is to acutely involve the viewer in what is going on in the picture. For this purpose I created surfaces that allow me to make the painting look unique for each viewing. The pictures will react to the environment they are placed in, talking differently about the same thing in different places. Also, the pictures will reflect the viewer, so they will talk differently about the same thing to different people.
I spent the last weeks working on some studies on these reflective and responsive surfaces and I am more than excited to finally be able to work on my concepts in bigger sizes. We are tying our lives together, going on a journey to unknown places, the glass, the copper and I.
