"The heart’s desire, as a painter, as a gestural painter, in fact a gestural painter in layers, is to ecstatically see through and express that privilege of consciousness in the immediacy of form, colour, stroke. Because when we look, say at a tree, we revel in the contained explosion of root, trunk, branch, leaf, blossom, fruit; fruit, blossom, leaf, branch, trunk, root. Thrust upwards, waving in the wind, shimmering. To see through that leaf to cell, to molecule, to atom, to energy is the ecstasy of the dervish. The dervish moves like that, is moved by that.
"We are the dervishes of the art world. From that ecstatic move to oneness with energy at the heart of things we fling colour onto canvas. It takes the shape of how we move, our dance. We are the psychic weathervane – turned by the multidimensional infinitely expressive currents of love, the consciousness of love. Burdened as we are by grief, by loss, by impossible desires, by the immense weight of the world, we spin, and throw off images from the unseen world, the world of sudden grace, of unconditional promise, of correspondences and revelations, of surprise.
"Isn’t it?"
—Jo Haines (artist)
"People (my family included) still question my determination for leaving realism far behind. During the late eighties, while painting L'Élue, a centenary tribute series to Nijinsky, the god of dance, my "realistic" paint application and gestures, inspired by the movement he was about, just wanted to explode, to push into the unknown, what I personally feel our obligation is as artists of all genres. I love the classics and without them none of what follow would be possible. I had my formation and basic training in and out of school, but comes a moment of realization that one has to travel further. I've been traveling ever since, finding my work to be about light, as in Orion The Hunter defending paradise, or in Courage, a work about hope and the eminent light at the end of the tunnel (both titles are included on these pages)."
—Ritchard Rodriguez
Notes on selected Abstract Paintings:
Courage
I was inspired to do a kind of galactic, Jack Kirby-ish* space piece, rather large in format. I got as far as the title and immediately lacked just that, “courage”, to commence work on it, or for many other things within my own personal life. This strong title opened up for me a certain awareness of things lacking in general, perhaps a reflection of the times we’ve been in, I don’t know. Well, 2001 being the worse year I can remember, horrible incidents surrounding me including the destruction of New York’s World Trade Center and those who occupied it on that tragic morning, the war that followed pounding military weight on the planet, and a dear friend struggling against cancer, all gave me the strength, incentive, and courage, to dive into it, tackle it, until year’s end; and in the end, I was quite content with the results. No, ‘Courage’ doesn’t have that galactic feel originally thought of, but it does remain a piece about hope, and about the courage to just step forward. It took twenty-seven years to paint.
Fear (3rd series)
Fear of Change inspired, despite this series created during yet another presidential election year (as with the previous Fear series from 2004), not by Barack Obama’s campaigning for “Change”, but by my very own “fear”, after having read coach specialist Jennifer White’s, Work Less, Make More.
Fear of Time inspired in part by Robert Ashley’s opera, DUST, track Just One More Time.
Fear of Religion inspired in part by John Cale’s song, Half Past France: “…nothing frightens me more, than religion at my door…”
Fear of Truth inspired in part by Al Gore’s film, Inconvenient Truth.
Fear of Lies inspired by a deleted scene from Francis Ford Coppola's film, Apocalypse Now, where Marlon Brando playing Colonel Kurtz states to Captain Willard, “...you remind me of my colleagues back in Washington”, angrily looking up, “those master liars”.
Comfort/Calins
Inspired by the refrain in John Cale’s recent song Wasteland: "...you comfort me, comfort me, hold me in the dark…" I painted the word "comfort" over and over.
Calins is the French word for cuddles.
Hostias II
Inspired by Mozart’s Requiem, second attempt at a piece by this title. Hostias, meaning victim, lent to an abrasive approach at the original painted back in 1990. The music being rather tranquil called for this alternate rendition.
Confutatis
Also inspired by Mozart’s Requiem. Lacrimosa being my favorite piece within the Requiem got painted back in 1990. This one is from the rather short music that leads to the Lacrimosa, one that grew on me through the years and demanded Mozart’s masterpiece revisited along with Hostias II. By comparison, Confutatis, which musically sets the mood for Lacrimosa, turned into a raw set of painting sessions, though sharing the same palette with Hostias II.
Fear (2nd series)
Inspired by Michael Moore’s Bowling for Columbine.
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The Dream Stelae
For reasons enigmatic to me, I was intrigued with the notion of painting something inspired by ancient Egypt. I decided on nine paintings altogether, proceeded to study all the Pharaohs of the 18th, 19th and 20th dynasties, and finally selected nine that were significant to me personally.
CODEX: Speculum Amoris I & II
CODEX initially would have been a rather ambitiously large installation comprised of paintings and text on glass, but the title remains attached to these two sole works. In the company of female friends, I was almost embarrassed to discover that Speculum was the name for the instrument found chez les gynecologists. Well, it comes from Latin and so happens to be, along with Amoris, the name given to the book read by Brother William’s young mascot (in author Umberto Eco’s, The Name Of The Rose), a collection of warnings by Christian and Moslem sages about the dangers of love. Song-writer David Thomas portrays such venom in his song Codex, which is obsessed with longing, that I thought it intriging to juxtapose these two works within an art installation. Speculum Amoris, the book, mentions lycanthropy as one potential outcome of love, so I very abstractly hint at a Loup Garou begging under a full moon within these two paintings.
Gethsemane (Calices)
Gethsemane is the garden in Jerusalem where Christ had it out with his Father, holding a symbolic chalice as he feared what was to come. There’s an aria in the Webber/Rice musical Jesus Christ Superstar which breaks the heart, and I happened to be going through my own personal problems, so...
Brazil’s Chico Buarque wrote Calices, a song which played with words at a time when their dictatorship would easily incarcerate or deport many: "Father, take this chalice away from me, of wine tinted with blood". Tinto is also the Portuguese word for red wine, and cálice is a homonym for "cale se": keep quiet.
These were painted in Recife, the capital of the Brazilian state Pernambuco, in a studio I rented in front of the main port. Four centuries earlier, across the street from me, stood a synagogue, no longer there today, but nonetheless being reconstructed today (???). Curiously, the Jews expelled, or chased away at the time, were some of the founders of New York when it still went by New Amsterdam.
Orion The Hunter
Inspired by and a tribute to *Jack Kirby, the most renown American comic book artist of the 20th century, and by his creation Orion of the New Gods. While celebrating my twenty-fifth year of painting, this piece would also mark my final work for the twentieth century and the millennium.
God's Song
Title inspired by Randy Newman.
Bob's Joke
Bob is new music composer Robert Ashley (portrait featured on Portrait pages).
William's Sagacity
Named after Brother William, the Franciscan Monk in Umberto Eco’s book, The Name Of The Rose.
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