These paintings no longer exist
Recently I have found some notes from the past. I got intrigued by a bit in which I described the technique and the process of creation of oil paintings. These paintings no longer exist. That is for a simple reason - I killed them myself.
I used them as a painting canvas. And though they all still live in my memory, in reality they don’t exist. I have my own thoughts about it. I don’t want to go into metaphors and present it as a symbol of human fate or, as some would say, other such trivialities.
I am presenting a fragment of the mentioned notes:
Something new has started to happen. I moved on from my interest in texture to a simple painting activity - working with colours. The rapacity, that I used to express with texture, now was about to be brought to life by colours. When I exhausted all means for the colours to fulfill my expectations, I enriched it using different raw materials. The result was a texture that could either enhance the appearance of the colour, or replace it entirely. But often it was just killing the colour.
Now I have regained my power over colour. It is no longer an enemy, that must be tamed, partially toned down and sometimes even destroy.
My approach to painting and what I found interesting about it, has not changed. What changed is my form of expression. I reckon the paintings that resulted from my previous experiences as well as showed me the direction to further my work was ‘Agony’. It would have never been painted without my previous attempts while painting ‘Woman and man’, ‘Conflict’, ‘Act’ or ‘Cataclism’. In ‘Agony’, one can still see my old approach to surface. In order to enhance the expression of the painting I would melt liquid paraffin into wet paint, I would burn pieces of paper on top of the canvas. However, there is a new structure to this painting. Its’ form is more uniform, allowing an undisturbed perception.
Later I created few other canvasses that showed me that I had not recognized at first all the possibilities that lied in this new technique. These paintings are in particular ‘Play’ and ‘I am one of you’. They are already spatial forms more than mere canvases. Then was ‘The bandit’ with its’ expressive form. Between February and March, I created ‘Spring Fever’- a painting that resembled ‘Agony’ in many ways. Not long later few more paintings emerged: ‘The Betrayal’, ‘Silence’, ‘The Afternoon with Ingrid Limerick’, ‘Trad’ and ‘Ahaggar’. Looking at them, I like to imagine they are fragments of larger canvases. I believe that it is a large format that could further express what I try to achieve.
Now I have mastered the form of expression that I find optimal for my work. I know it as it is not limited exclusively to the oil painting technique. My drawings and graphics gradually have more in common with my oil canvases. Not when it comes to their subject and expressiveness as much as on the side of form. I have discovered it through my searching. This form is not perfect or exhaustive, but it keeps me ‘on top’. I don’t know for how long.
Apparently, back then it was not yet what I wanted to achieve. As the title says: these paintings no longer exist.
As conclusion I can say that just as much as our goal, just as important is the journey we embark on in order to achieve it.
* As illustration I used photos of paintings, that actually exist: two were sold and the fate of the last one is unknown to me.
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