There is nothing difficult about it: Things that turn are fascinating to look at. Even things that hold only the promise of turning are fascinating. We are all turning, moving around, but without feeling it. Yet the power of attraction of things that turn we do feel. So simple, so uncontrollable. A circle is powerful and circumscribed, once completed starting anew.
I just dive in, and starting is the most difficult. After the start everything else just follows. I assume that I can just do what I want, so I make images that are of interest to me. I hope that it will be interesting to the viewer too, but cannot predict it. By making a start, thus by effectively determining that you are starting something, a path is created. And on that path I seek the most satisfying route. There is a plan, but it is not thought through, and sometimes the connection is hard to find, but then things come together, because I myself am the unifying thread that runs through my work. The ideas in my head are also limited, however varied they may seem, so everything always comes together. Such as a circle that is always completed to start anew.
The ‘new windmills’ is a series of works that all rotate and that are painted or daubed. Without an endpoint. The layers of paint/material that are thus created always cover the previous layer, making a work brand new once again. The layer of make-up that, as it were, becomes the future skin, then dermis, and then sub-dermis. The starting point for this series of works was the short story by Honoré de Balzac, The Unknown Masterpiece. A story about a painter who in his search for the perfect painting remains stuck for years working and reworking on the same painting. He improves, retouches and adds paints until at the tentative end there is a lump of material, which in his eyes approaches perfection. Two old friends who visit his studio understand nothing and even claim that they cannot see anything at all. A kind of formless mist.
The power of this story is that the truths of the painter and of his old friends are opposed. The painter “lived” his search, while his friends stood still. This made me realize that the search is tremendous but that it must not be made to please “friends”. If the result of the search is good and pursued to the end then they will come to understand it, later.
© Willem BOEL
Exposition
