my painting |
||
w. wessely Every line is a sign. Why can we understand the meaning of drawings, why do our souls react immediately and in a very distinct manner when seeing for example a drawing done by Matisse, Cocteau, Renoir, Rembrandt or Schiele? Every line is a sign, which talks very directly to us, because it allows us to find our point of view in the infinity of the world surrounding us and being in ourselves. I am not painting the things around me, but I am painting the signs, which make the things talk to us. New things donīt know very much, their surface hasnīt seen so much, so they canīt tell us very interesting stories. I prefer to study surfaces of high age like those of the two lorries I found on the south coast of Crete in November 1976. In this case, I had the feeling as if listening to two old men whispering anecdotes of their long lives. The mandarin on the wall: a small sun touching the horizon of her short being on earth: the signs on her patterned surface are trying to talk about their brotherhood with chinese letters. Snow as red as blood: snow-fields in the crete mountains are turning into red signs. By changing the color I changed the meaning. I am highly interested in the points of change: when does a figure change into a letter?, where is the point, that makes out of a shadow a readable sign?, when does a reflection on the water turn into a snake of ligthning or into a greek character called Sigma? Where and when does the decision about seeing signs in a certain meaning take place? Trying to find an answer to these questions I had a dream. A young boy was playing with loam. He was throwing balls of loam across a channel. On the other side of the channel rose the wall of an old palazzo. Suddenly I understood what the young boy was doing: he was trying to create meaning by throwing loam across the channel. So I painted: Southern Childhood, Boy throwing Loam across the Channel |
*** |
about my films |
|