I miss Paris. In the last 2 years, I have visited the city 3 times. I am attracted to it. In the past, I was fascinated by the culture, the museums, the paintings and important architecture that you can find in abundance. But recently, I have been captured by the ‘place’ of Paris: the corner of the city without the hordes of tourists, the street-corner cafe, the 50-metre-square park with two benches and a tree. In these ‘places’ I see beauty.
What I see is not only the place but the people. An attitude of going about business in a reasonable and generally peaceful way. I think of ‘Illuminism’ and ‘reason’ as two qualities that can be reflected not only in the way the city is organized but in the way life is carried out.
It is difficult to capture that in a painting and I know that I am working from a distance: seeing things through ‘lenses’ that are filtered.
I stayed 10 days in Saint Denis 18 months before an apartment there was raided by a special police squad and a terrorist cove was uncovered. I walked along that street. I remember the tension that I felt in the eyes of the inhabitants of that district. I didn’t understand the ‘reason’ and I didn’t find it particularly ‘illuminating’.
Where there is beauty, there is also evil. Maybe the artist tries to focus on the former rather than the latter. Maybe one would prefer to not see that which isn’t as obvious, but evil remains a condition of this planet that we inhabit. [whohit]-Artist’s-Eye_EN-[/whohit]
