ARTIST'S STATEMENT

Thirty years ago, I wrote:
“Look for the stroke, weightless, a pure swing of energy”.
A few years later, the stroke came alive when I started to learn Chinese calligraphy and, through François Cheng’s work, discovered a pictorial space where drawing and painting are one and where the stroke is as light as a breath. This new understanding has since permeated my work, whether I engage in painting, engraving or drawing.
The stroke emanates from the body, which directs its energy towards painting, engraving or drawing all what a ‘tactile eye’ would have seen of the world. Intensity. Plenitude. Immediacy.
“I am what I see”, to quote Alexandre Hollan.
In my work, I am trying to express my intimate relationship with the world, a relationship which blurs the boundaries between subject and object. I am this body that draws another body, for instance that of a tree, and then identifies with the whole forest, or with the intimate space of a garden. The work of art then emerges.
Trees, forests, gardens and the human body appear for several years in my work as intertwined subjects, expressing the relationship between nature and mankind in forms that transcend what can be seen in the visible world. The creative gesture of painting, drawing or engraving traces his way back to paradise: nature beyond words.

 

BÉATRICE SOKOLOFF