#33 – L’âme à vif
December 2015 – July 2016
Mixed media – Acrylic and plastic shapes on canvas (1m x 1m)
I started this particular painting “Wounded soul” during the traditional Christmas break, where time slows down, at least for me. I’d been deeply affected in my soul by the terrorist attack on the French concert hall The Bataclan in November 2015, particularly as a number of my relatives live in Paris. It felt so close to home. One of them was enjoying the evening in a restaurant a few hundred meters away.
I painted my sadness, helplessness, anger, a big mix of emotions. I felt the tragedy, after having read so many testimonials and seen heartbreaking pictures. I let the painting rest for a number of months. And then, on 14 July 2016, there was yet another terrorist attack, this time in Nice, on the Mediterranean French coast, on Bastille day, the French national holiday. Yet more innocent lives were taken, amongst them children. The pain was really deep, grieving with the parents of these little children and for all the victims who had nothing to do with the madness of deliberately punishing innocent people in the name of extremism.
I threw paint on the canvas, I cried, I screamed, I brushed the paint with feathers, smoothing and soothing the paint on the canvas as if I was trying to soothe souls.
The colors on the canvas are blue white and red, like the French flag. The red represents my anger, the blood which was spilled and the joy of people celebrating at the same time. The white is for the innocence, the light, freedom. And the shades of blue are for summer, the night, shootings and pain. There are also whisps of gold, very discrete, for hope. The dashes of color almost look like notes of music… a concert was going on at the Bataclan and I imagine that there was music playing in the streets of Nice as is common on 14 July.
To me, this painting has captured life suddenly suspended and a bare, wounded soul. L’âme à vif.
*** Painting sold to private collector in Germany *** Available as limited edition print ***