l'amour est un volcan

Comment

Comment by Resident Curator on April 26, 2018 at 9:53am

Curator’s Comments:

 

I find myself drawn to the painting l’amour est un volcan for its enigmatically disparate elements.  The hand-painted lettering at the base carries a good deal of visual weight, and so I’m pulled into the bottom of the piece before the flames bring my eyes upward to the disembodied lovers. Their cool blue hues and ghostly semi-transparency separate them from the heated passions of the world- or least the explosive volcano.  I also appreciate the darker band of blue sky pushing them back down into the picture plane, as it balances the intense and shooting flames, while emphasizing the calm space above. This tension between the domain of the lovers and the corporeal world is further accentuated by the stability of the square picture plane.  I wonder if the structural narrative of the piece is taken from ex-voto works, which incorporate words along the edge of supernatural scenes.  When I looked through your other work to determine if the format was repeated, I was surprised to see the range of subjects and aesthetic variants.  I see a more careful and controlled illustrative hand in most of your paintings- L’Amour may be an outlier.  Perhaps the subject matter called for a more expressive and emotive approach.