It's a stormy sky over a wheat field
Standing there, with no recourse, I see the lightning strike:
A flash of white, in one second an eternity of pain and discharge.
I'm shaking, sweating, trying not to vomit.
I'm burning inside, nothing seems to exist but violence. Nothing makes sense anymore. The wind howls incomprehensible words that I'd love to grasp.
The fire devours and surrounds me, it's going to sufocate me. I'm sufocating.
I can't wake up.
I try as hard as I can, but my body won't move.
I can't wake up.
I want it so much that I think I'm waking up but then it starts all over again:
Sky, clouds and lightning.
The flames are getting closer, I can feel the burn.
I sink my feet into the earth, praying to be buried.
O Mother Earth, take me back now
Take me back before I turn into ashes!
A tremor, a fault and I'm sinking deeper.
I come to, on the edge of uneasiness, relieved but in disarray. The dream was so clear yet so dark,
It followed me even after I woke up.
There's no point fighting the wind and the storm.
May they come and swallow me up forever!
Let them make me part of their rage!
Let them no longer play with me, but make my anguish their own! I want to be at peace.
I painted a stormy sky with a roller and a red background, with the idea of painting plates on the lava. I worked in layers with Scotch tape. I used brushes, knives and feathers for texture. The process took several weeks; resuming and then abandoning the canvas as my energy and inspiration took me.
On the couch, I have a calming dream: a ball of light rising into the sky. I have the idea of including it in my painting: bubbles of golden light that would emerge between the layers and rise into the sky. But I can't go through with my idea, I just can’t add yellow to this powerful unity of black and red.
Then I had the idea of painting eyes in the sky to emphasize the feeling of guilt, the questioning gaze, the one seen in the mirror. I was inspired by the work of Alain Urgal, a painter and a friend of my father’s.
I test and do preparatory work until I finally start this first figurative note, which, is also human. I choose white, with the idea of eventually moving on to color, and something interesting happens while I paint. I want to soften a line that's a little too pronounced for my taste, and I tap it with a sponge full of water, and the water runs down the length of the painting, as if the eye were crying. This reminds me of waking dreams, and I dilute red paint to make the eyes cry lava or blood. So instead of going up, the lines go down.
I went to the couch with my painting. The session that followed was very intense: guilty of what? Guilty of being alive, the original guilt, the guilt of being born.