SYMBOLISM OF LETTERS AND SIGNS IN MY PAINTING
I am deeply led by the strong belief that the purpose of art is not to imitate entities from this world yet to lift itself to the divine spheres, to renew and make life longer as well as to make visible something hidden from an ordinary man that only an artist can spot. Therefore, in painting I tend to express my feelings, visions and ideas about the man and everything that makes him such as well as his lifestyle phenomenon.
As I developed my comprehension of the world and as I gained new experiences during the last couple of years, the man’s role in my paintings was different. The human figure was left out in paintings “Military Shirts” yet the shape and the position of the shirt reminds us on the fact that a man used to wear it. Different identification numbers that can be seen on every shirt symbolically represent an individual.
The arrogance of isolated individuals that pull the strings from their thrones protected by capital, ruling human lives led to a rebellion within me, which I tried to express with my critical and ironic attitude. Painting a shirt alone I alluded to what can remain out of a human body when somebody’s conceit gives itself the right to rule human lives.
After this series of paintings it has seemed to me that critical attitude towards reality in painting has little power to change the world in comparison to the presentation of its magnificence and beauty. Although I am just a cell in that huge living organism and I do not play a crucial part in its regeneration I believe that every positive spark is a step forward its recovery.
After that a series of paintings that presents an embraced male and female figure or lovemaking follows. My aim was to present the very meaning of human nature in these scenes, love as an everlasting ideal as well as love as a universal energy that pervades the man and the world around him.
Paintings with the fragmented human figures come next. A complete figure has been replaced by a bust, portrait, hand or a foot. A painted figure is in a free form or it is a deformed iconic sign representing that figure. There you see a form which becomes a sign symbolising a man.
Furthermore, a very important element in my paintings is the text. It mostly forms a structure to the background of the painting. Beside that, the text plays an important part for me in the painting process because the meaning of the text is closely related to the situation or an event which was the prime impulse for getting the idea for the painting. The very act of writing words while I work helps me a lot to recapture that event in my mind and to experience it emotionally again so that I can transmit a positive emotion of that moment more accurately.
My tendency to fully express my inner experiences of the world demanded a freer expression of gestures in the artistic sense leading to the point when a figure in the painting began to restrict me.
Therefore, in the last series of paintings the notion of human figure was left out. It is fully replaced by the text in a way that by reading it in the painting it forms a picture in one’s mind’s eye where a man still takes part. For example, there is a sentence Sleeping with an open window. It is possible, and I count on that in advance, that this text will provoke a chain of additional pictures in the minds of a public. Apart from the scene that a man is sleeping there, another pictures follow: …. a warm summer night … moonlight shining on the room … a warm wind is blowing through an open window… that all leads to the conclusion that the man enjoys himself on the night like that, that he has sweet dreams, and perhaps he is not alone after all …and the pictures comes one after the other indefinitely.
With the text in the painting I get a completely new parallel dimension. In the other painting there is a sentence Glowing red bed cover. The painting with this text is painted in blue and after reading it another additional artistic effect occurs in the contrast between the blue painting and an imaginary firing red bed cover. And so on…
I could not say that I have ambition to give a message in my paintings in the first place. My wish is to create a certain reality resulting from a unique encounter between me and the overall reality with the aim to form a vision which could be important to others as well as it is to me. The only possible ambition is to share my paintings of reality with others.
lunch at building site 200x175cm
pretty pillow 200x175cm
surrounded by saints 200x175cm
king moro naba 200x175cm
red fresh flowers 200x175cm
favourite pictures above the bad 200x175cm
edan ogboni 200x175cm
breakfast at building site 200x175cm
