Aries, Francois
As a Mountain Tarn (Artist Statement)
I find few things as inspiring as a mountain tarn. The often small ponds of icy water nestle between rock outcrops or ripple among tussock. One of them in particular occupies a cherished place in my memory, a place where imagination mingles with inspiration.
It inspires me by its harmony and its great beauty. Also by its significance. Exposed to all weather, it rests on a ridge, like an eye gazing up into the sky. It mirrors the passing of time. It witnesses the marching constellations who whisper their meaning to the night. I too, look for meaning.
Setsuya Kotani, a Japanese American ceramicist and abstract painter writes : “Universal meaning finds its way into art with or without discursive intellectual effort, but it requires a certain receptivity from the artist who turns toward that level of meaning, that aspect of his or her inner life.” *
For me, to leave town and clamber up the slopes take me closer to that inner life. I gasp for air but inhale silence. The day’s unfolding gathers significance. I feel part of the mountains, part of a greater world. Whispering is about, just out of reach of my human ear.
Ideas underlying painting series have come to me in altitude. I worked on them later, back on the plain. Sometimes I find individual paintings bear little ketes of meaning. Nothing lofty or grandly universal, but metaphoric thoughts relevant to everyday life. I paint them without discursive attempt, yet I don’t mean to hold the kete shut.
To me, # 124 is a mirror between two states of existence. It could parallel many life situations. # 112 and # 122 explore horizontal influences over a vertical world; # 109 displays the evolutions of loose stripes towards resolution in a bare field; # 107 shows right and left sided objects addressing each other; # 110 is about the mutual influences of three similar ‘events’, it is also about grouping and isolation.
Abstract paintings can be taken as vacuous decorative objects, leaving a pond as a pond. I’m not uncomfortable with that. They may also challenge the figurative mind which insists on ‘seeing’ actual scenes or objects in them. Some meaning might also be construed from that.
To me, they spontaneously offer metaphors. Bereft of primary meaning, their abstract, visual qualities call for a resonance. Meanwhile, our comprehension of life situations and the world in general benefits from abstractions. By the synthesis of the metaphor, two unrelated experiences are brought together. If they prove to make a whole ‘without discursive intellectual effort’, both our understanding and the painting gain in depth.
My mission as an artist, as I see it, is to practice Setsuya Kotani’s ‘turning towards my inner life with receptivity’. It is also, in the same motion, to become one with mountains and listen for whispers. My sincere endeavour is to provide the viewer with a window where the eye can rest from the stampede of everyday life, with a space where inner life may be prompted to whisper, with an object as a mountain tarn, where imagination mingles with inspiration. (François Aries, June 2009)
* Quoted in An Art of Our Own by Roger Lipsey (Shambhala, 1988), page 26.
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