It feeds everything that is authentic because it recognizes three simple truths:
nothing remains,
nothing is complete,
and nothing is perfect.
– Leonard Koren / Japan’s philosophy of modesty
When I stand in front of a blank canvas, it’s like life itself: play and unpredictable unfolding to get to the point. It is an undulating flow where all that is beautiful is the fruit of the benevolent work of chance coincidence. I always plan and nearly nothing is random during my artistic processes what eases the creative process, the unfolding of the visual story for a while, until it starts to inhibit.
It is impossible to arrive to the essence of a purely rigid methodological basis or with engineering precision – I must to recognise the feeling AND understand it when I get to this point where I have to step out of my head to get to something more complete. I can subscribe this place something with a dynamical balance between the head and heart; a dialogue between them to get the point.
The search for beauty has always been my driving force, but the same research can later deprive me of my creative freedom. In the case I start to work for to reach the perfect version of the painting I run into a some kind of prison.
Orientals know exactly that nothing is perfect.
Vabi-sabi (侘 寂;), according to the Japanese conception of beauty, makes tranquility, imperfection, and refined simplicity make up beauty. In it lies respect for coincidence, acceptance of transience, release of perfect symmetry; because there is no perfect symmetry.
Clinging to the visible and known surface can be soothing, then suddenly the same clinging can separate me from the depth, which I have to experience so that I can visualize it in my art works. Everything that separates us from depths and changes become to a putty and sticky appearance. The sustaining power of safety, the known roads, will slow everyone and every process down and make us stiff after a while.
Accepting my own vulnerability frees me from the unpredictability of the visual story that materializes on the canvas.
We walk the way “hand in hand”.
The story and me.
Images: “Maya – the Godess of the Illusion” – details, WINEporTRAIT in process
