I am an art lover, but ever since my childhood I have been keen to make a contribution to art by making it, too. I have explained this to myself by saying that the same basic generator
underlies art and love. You don’t just want to be a spectator, but an active maker, too.
This touches on the interplay between desire and action, and also on the old
philosophical issue of the ideal and the real.
Over the years, it has become quite clear to me that my art emerges from real life, reflecting its joys and sorrows, conflicts and shocks, its normalities and coincidences. I may use parallels drawn from literature, film and music, but the basic cake is the personal experience, to which I try to give form. The rest is more-or-less successful decoration – strawberries from the surrounding cultural world.
“Elise Eagle” got her bright-pink, orange and “brain-blue” colours simply because I was happy when I was painting the relief surface. The ”Rabbit Helmet” sitting on the eagle’s head was a biological reference…Cultural references were not adequate here, since we were talking about human beings protecting nature. But it’s now or never… |
