#16 – Naissance inversée
June – August 2015
Acrylic on canvas (1m x 1m)

Is this painting finished? Is it the right way up? There are days when I can answer yes to both questions and others when I no longer know. (Note: Scroll to the end if you want to see it “the other way round”).

This is one of the most spiritually-charged painting that I have created, the first one to be so bold and open with it. It carries pain and joy and healing and light and a lot of energy. Fire.

I have ached over it, loved it, questioned it, cherished it. It is still a mystery to me.

Underneath the top layer is a first layer of red, purple, white and sky blue, then more layers filled with white light, incandescent orange, yellow… These initial layers hold so much energy and life that it felt like giving birth when painting them with my bare hands, messy and bloody (from the red paint) and wonderful at once… Hence the title which includes the word “birth” (“naissance” in French).

I have turned the painting upside down many times. In one direction, it feels like the roots of a tree, then turned again on its head, it feels like the crown of a tree. Both molten lava or fire, reviving itself or burning. Two poles present at once. Light and darkness too.

Below the extremely dark prussian blue on the side of this “tree” are bright yellow and sienna flowers and seed pods. I have structured the layers of paint with wooden chopsticks with both hands throughout the painting. The result are grooves in the paint from the motions.

In a more meditative session, I embellished the feather-like branches or roots with silver beads of fluid paint, barely noticeable on a computer screen, but clearly visible in the original 1m x 1m format.

This is a very personal and intimate painting and showing it always makes me feel awkward, with a fear to be judged lurking in the back of my mind. Is it abstract? Is it a tree? Is it upside down? Should I turn it on its head? Is it still in its “awkward teenager phase”, longing to be understood? In any case, it is one of a kind. And I let it be.

Here’s how it looks “the other way round”. What’s right, what’s wrong? As you like it. As I titled it, an “inverted birth” (“naissance inversee”).

#16 – Naissance inversee (upside down)