"Il est venu" - he has come

I don't paint or draw or sculptor really like what us described in books or learned in classes. Neither do I write like I have been taught to, actually.

I don t decide. I ask. And people, or animals, or characters, they accept and come. Or not.

I know I have a different way to show things - which is often a complex for me by the way, in this century of hyper realism and hyper techniques where you are supposed to make drawings that resemble a photography - or don t ressemble anything and are supposed to be then "conceptual".

I just cannot work like this, and I create a bit like, probably, most do pray - I don t pray, it s something that has been broken in me a long time ago, when I was a little girl in a Swiss Banker family where faith was considered to be dumb and ridiculous -

And even though I have a strong faith, I just can t pray like anybody even now -

So I suppose one could say I pray when I draw, paint, sculpt, or write... I give myself to what I am doing, and ask the Big All to help me and use my body to give birth to what is right now.

I suppose also that's why I am absolutely unable to draw violence, hunt, death, or even fighting. The only fact to look at such a scene takes me out of where I am able to work, for it need happiness, light, joy, or at least real strength and  beauty in what I see, for me to be able to draw it 

Sometimes it comes as a surprise , even (surtout ?) to me. In my novel "lion or liar" , one of my characters obstinately refused to say and do what I was about to write , one morning. I had written a careful and detailed plan of my book, with all my characters well defined and my plan. And this character came to me one morning, smelling fire, to tell me "something had happened I had notplanned". I was pissed of. Being forced to change all my plans because of a stubborn functionary man, I had no idea if it happened to anyone apart me ?.. But I had no choice, words did not come as long as I refused to write down what he had to say and accept the change of plans.

Turned out it changed all my plans for the mystery, he suspend, and even the murderer, 

but I soon realised my history went better after that, 

and I have learned then (it was in 96-98) to trust my creations better than myself.

this happens all the times in what I draw and sculpt. I take a picture of what I feel encounter to work, I start my work... And sometime it s not who I think I am drawing who shows up. 

One of my first sculptures that made it to a French National exhibit happened exactly like this.... I started with a cub bear photography, and worked for an hour without  getting what I saw. 

Till I got from my clay bear this message : "the cub does not want to come, he is not the one for this situation, let me stay, I am the one for you today."

And this adult  bear I had not expected went all the way to my first exhibit...

I call it the "he has come " moment ("il est venu", in French.)

The moment when the animal or the character accepts to come and to give me something of himself which is not a "work of mine" 

Sometimes it does not work : nobody wants to come. And I feel empty like a lost abalone shell.

And most of the times (always ?) it s to me a disappointment once my art is done, even if the life comes, for it s NEVER what I has envisioned, 

and to me the finished work is always a suffering (I know the word may look strong, but to me  it is,) for I always have this "betrayal of beauty I have seen" feeling.

I am not sure if taking classes in art could have eased that feeling. Maybe, when a teacher praises your work, or when you get good grades, it helps make you feel better than what you originally thought of yourself. But I did not get a chance to study art, I had to study business and politics, as my parents had decided for me....

I am now far from my International Marketing and Business MBA as you can see !

So I work on who wants to come. And now, I slowly allow my pen to go for people - something I have never done before in fact, for I am soooo anxious to "betray" my models that I have never drawn people before - you generally don t get a painful remark or worse a strong interdiction to "ever do that to me again" from a bear or a gorilla - heureusement.

But here I feel the urge to draw what I see and have never seen before. Not only the nature. Not only the animals. Not only the landscapes.

But also the people.

Those who have a link with the world I have never met in France before. The horses whisperer, the wild souls tamers, the farmers loving their land and listening to the wind in the trees like old shamans.

I have no ideas where this will take me. 

I just let the ones who want to come in my work drop in. I use photography, old pictures, what I find that makes echo to what I see here in reality. 

And I have learned this morning that Apaches did say, a century ago, that some (not all) photographers were"shadow catchers", for they were able with their photos to steal a part of the soul.

I try not to steal, but I know that when I draw someone, I enter in deep understanding of who he or she is. I feel the pains and the broken smiles, I touch the skins and the muscles created by lives. I do feel sometimes I touch a part of the soul, for when you draw, you go , curiously, under the skin.

I thank those who let me draw them and forgive my "special style"

And I go back to this world where I have to find my son, gone for a tour in the neighborhood, while I was lost in my drawings...