Color and light are the initial starting point for everything that can happen. First there is that initial emotion, and everything else is just a consequence.
Creating a mood with color and light is different from telling a story with figurativeness. I limit myself to 2 or 3 carefully chosen colors. How carefully? Well, very carefully. For a long time, many days, I carry this reflection inside me, make observations more or less conscious and wait for that moment of fascination. I evoke moods in myself with the help of memories, smells, sounds. Anything that works on the senses is helpful. Time of day. I roam with my eyes over the places where the light of the day or a lamp falls and I surrender to it, or rather, I ask myself, is this what attracts me? Is this what I want right now? And it comes, it always comes, it’s like a dazzle. Suddenly I know which colors I will choose this time. Then comes only the relief, the pleasure of dealing with colors and that proper mystery of building color meaning working on a painting. From these 2 chosen main colors I will create a space that will be neither of them. Well, and then there is that third color, usually umbra (my umbra, which I create myself every time, because the ready-made one rarely suits me). I use this third color possibly and only to “extinguish” the whole thing if it gets too fussy. I love this celebration before starting work. Wiping the brushes, preparing the paints. The paint must have the perfect consistency – loose enough to blend with the other and thick enough to give the right color saturation. I like it when you can see the paint – the velvety quality of of it. I set the music – I choose it accordingly to my colors – maybe it’s a symptom of synesthesia? Maybe all this together is some kind of symptom of serious mental malaise, but I love it. The work itself with brushes (I have a separate one for each color, only at the finish do I take a fourth, clean one) is already consumption. For I am consuming the admiration and adoration that I have built up for a long time for these particular colors, because now I just wander with my brushes guided by the beauty of their synergy. Then I meditate for a long time on what has happened, this overflowing discoloration. How is it possible to make millions of colors from just 2? I illuminate with different light with varying intensity and absorb these nuances. I come and go. I wonder if this is the moment to inject an object into the space that will disperse this coherence and infinity. I need it to stop this flowing, even escaping infinity. I watch, I contemplate, until I understand what has been created and what is required of me in this final stroke. And when it happens, it’s like breathing the air after emerging from the depths. Calmness and even breathing return.
