SACREBLEU
The French composer and organist Olivier Messiaen claimed that his complex chords and rhythms came to him in "coloured dreams" in which he saw blue, red and green spirals moving and turning with the sounds. "When I hear music, I see in the mind's eye colours which move with the music. This is not imagination, nor is it a psychic phenomenon. It is an inward reality."
In this body of work, I am breaking the painted surface into small multifaceted areas of paint, creating polyphonic structures of rythm.
There is a deeply felt personal relationship with the subject matter in this series. Kandisky said 'Colour is the keyboard, the eyes are the hammers, the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand which plays, touching one key or another, to cause vibrations in the soul.’ In my case the soul is the piano accordion, an instrument that was given to me by my musician friend Jim Moginie, and that I have since then, relentlessly explored the possibilities. Trained as a classical piano player since I was 7 years old, I started to tame this new instrument, experimenting, practising for long hours, and jamming with my partner the sculptor Stephen Coburn, who can play many string instruments, mandolin, guitars...To be able to be heard beside the piano accordion he took a banjo and together we created a new band that we named "Sacrebleu", an old sea-fairy exclamation. This body of work is inspired by the music that we play, and each work relates to a piece of music or a song.
Looking directly at the work artists do, reveals there is evidence to support the idea that a number of approaches to Art exist. In Sacrebleu Series we can see the influence of music and colours but also stained-glass windows and mosaics.
Playful, dreamy, and spiritual, the wide-ranging variations delineate how freely I accommodate each work as it is shaped, and the many fantasies I present in a secret language to illustrate the degree to which I continually strive, and I hope succeed, in my quest to make you feel the pulse of my piece, and to slowly nurture it along, in tune to a tempo you hear through looking at it.
