Celtic (2023)

" I do like this “Keltoï” ethymology which could mean “Mountain man” and if they laid rocks elsewhere, it is maybe to remind theirs origins”», Kenneth White, Dérives (1978)

 

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My roots are celtic and armoricain. Scotland was my first trip in 1986 as a teenager : Highlands, Loch Ness, Skye Island, a brutal land shrouded in mist and mystery. In 2016, I visited the “ Celts, art and identity” exhibition in the British Museum and discovered that these mosaic of people (totally undervalued even today) was certainly much more delicate and refined, more technologically advanced than the Greek and Roman reported.
I have always been attracted by animist and native civilizations, their effervescent sensitivity stimulating imagination, their magical, poetical and metaphysical dimensions. As north American Indian or Inuit rituals, celt mythology triggers transcendence and necessary gratitude for earth and sentient beings. In these three civilizations, humor and mischief mean a lot : « Cheshire Style » and baroque vegetation in celtic artefacts, Kokopelli figure for Navajo tribe, gentle Inuit creatures with bitter smile. I discovered a kind of universality between Celts and Amerindians (oral transmission, human sacrifices, prophetical dreams, druidic shamans, careful observation of seasons, deer and circle symbolism, women empowerment…)
« Sacred seizes individual, and which, coming from elsewhere, gives him the feeling of being », wrote Carl Gustav Jung. Sacred artefacts are ubiquitous in celt art. His mystical content , « the root of roots”* raised and empowered us. I see Art as a great intuition coming from within and aiming interiority of every human being, “ a soul vibration”*, an open-minded opportunity that encourages to see and think different. Art is not a static entertainment, it is a fertile vector of knowledge and tolerance and create “the refinement of the soul”* and the artist has to be the “servant of higher ideals”* for any human being, any people, any time.

These new paintings are imbued with celt legends.
Menhir statues and granite.
Turmoil and softness.
Geometrical signs. Regeneration. Talisman. Purifies.
New sensorial and spiritual worlds
Where vegetal, mineral and animal triumph will be.
Where human being, this infinitesimal thing in the infinite world, walks through the same puzzles.
Each painting in this new series is accompanied by poetry.


* “Concerning the Spiritual in Art”, Wassily Kandinsky, 1910