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Notes on My Painting
 
Quartet on Turangalila, 2020
oil on cotton
60” x 144” (152.4 cm x 365.76 cm), two panels joined

Quartet on Turangalila

Quartet on Turangalila, 2020. The music of Olivier Messiaen has been very important to me as contemporary musical thought. There is a magnificent completeness and complexity (not minimalist ) in its full range of sound and emotional structures, that I want my painting to carry. "Turangalila-Symphonie" is such a work, though the limits of my painting did not allow me to get there completely. My quartet (by 3-line divisions) suggests a derivation rather than an equal achievement to Messiaen's magnificent work. The strident colorful jumps in my painting could be likened to the abrupt changes, but there the comparison ends. I was attempting to create color accumulations as areas without creating undesirable (for me) color shapes. The overall audacity of the work gives it a "joy of life" quality that is more Matisse. I sometimes aim for excitement as a sensibility, but having reached it, I begin to retreat gradually, as I need the intricacies of detailed elements. Through my own evolutions, the polarities of Expressionism and Classicism are always strongly pulling my aesthetics and are active in the progression of my works.

 

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