The Creative Act

“Creation is the expression of a unique personality. In order to be authentic, the creation has to include the artist’s inner self, which comprises the mythogenes ingrained in the work of art, and consists of dynamics which are as specific to the artist as his fingerprints” (Shoham)

In Art, the creative act is a Titanic battle between flesh and spirit. Each artwork is a diversion of the flesh, the body. Each time the artist dies, a new work is born or rather the opposite. Each time a work of art is born the artist dies a little. A little death invokes a greater desire to live and thus creates another artwork. When the artist dies finally, she continues to live through her offspring - her children and her artworks!

To sculpt is to create a work of art by a series of destructions - violent acts as chisels cut through wood or stone; angle grinders slash through bones; and an electric saw searing through and massacring forms - driven by a desire to leave only one single form as the ultimate! Then the triumph of the EGO! There is often a state of high that accompanies the creative act. A high that is both infantile and barbaric as if one had drunk juices from the tired liver of an alcoholic!

Sculpture is about mass and space. It must be grounded and free to soar, flow or float through space. A grain of wood or stone, even bone, is shaped by the fluids that have passed through it. Metal must first be melted. In other words each material that I use retraces the journeys of its juices, to reflect them, to quote them! The wood must dry up before it is used. The bone must part with decaying flesh and wait for the marrow to harden before the work begins. To sculpt therefore is metaphorically, to revisit the original state of the material, to externalize its fluidity.

In 1984 I was asked what my art means to me. This is what I wrote and I still believe this to be true except that we are now a liberated people!

In my art I seek to express myself in a manner most appropriate, lucid
The self I attempt to express is a collective self,
Ideas are not born in isolation
The brain or body responds to the external world,
Builds storage of facts and feelings to be touched, triggered, cajoled….

In a dialogue with others I am a capsule of love and anger
A memory cell of oppression, repression
And a violent struggle within me to be free
To express my dream

My body is a centre of colliding forces
My brain a matador, a gored bull sometimes
My brain is a film, an art gallery, a war zone.
I try to externalize it
To make comparison with other canvasses
To confirm, contradict, to contribute to a debate
A confirmation, denial.

The brain is a mirror that reflects itself
Feelings are copiers that reproduce themselves
Self programmed, Time programmed
Rebelling against programming
I am a free agent moving in the sky in ever widening spirals of love and hate
War and Peace……..In a state of BECOMING!