ANOTHER PATH

Painting is not just a pastime as a mean to occupy spirits, to inhibit them, turn them away from the intensity of life. It is neither a product of decoration, quickly forgotten, nor an answer to life's problems neither to personal dramas.

Painting permits an opportunity to "hear", to have another kind of access to the world and to the universe, other than the one proposed by science, new technology, communication, economy, politics, society...

On the other hand, are we capable, today, to continue interrogating the human adventure in the face of the unknown? The same interrogation was implicitly laid down by our ancestors (cf. Cave painting).

Another question imposes itself more and more: that of the limit of our civilisation. A civilisation that thinks it can do anything and everything is possible. With the risk of self-destruction and even the elimination of humans on earth. The elements of this deadly risk and its consequences can be found in the contemporary art world of today : painting, writing, music etc...

The living is complex and not so obvious.

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The painter, in order to keep his liberty and to "not die", should paint faster than the painting itself. Marc Chagall: "Behind me, follow my paintings" or Henri Michaud, the poet: " Try to get "out". Go far enough inside you that your style can no longer follow".
The entanglements of seeing, thoughts and actions, the burdensomeness of the times or the interpretations of the world, contributes to drag down the painter's creative speed. This is not a question of rapidity. But a kind of "seeking" without intention. To "look ahead", a lucid anticipation. Faster than a child ! Just to the point of thinking without words !

What's left is a realm forgotten today: spirituality, this dimension of inaccessible figure mankind. A dimension separated from any power. Found within the depths of humankind. It gives humans the most freedom and most imagination in regards to the universe. With this, the painter observes the infinite.

What can make a painter's world experimentation intolerable, obscene or inaudible, is the constant presence of the unknown in every action, in the traces and masses that the artist display, unknown that gives to the lowest and the heaviest matter, the highest and the lightest substance, a quality of an "auto-critic material" in regards to the "work of art", and at the same time access to its grace.

When creating isn't communicating.

"The names of beauty are the names of nobody" (Christian Bobin).

Painting: experimentation against all interpretations.

To paint: a breakthrough of the world.

Texte de Jean-Auguste Murat / Traduction de Chad Bredehoft and Laure Thompson
http://www.muratpeintre.fr