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I spent the last two days changing a couple of European countries and airports and meeting quite a lot of people. And I probably never been prouder that I'm Romanian. On Sun evening I was in Spain when I heard at the radio about the winner of Palme d'Or and my first thought was that I hadn't understood correctly. Then, I saw the French news, then read the French newspapers, and the English ones, and then, while checking-in, people congratulated me for the prizes Romania got..
Well, this is something that I'd like to live again and again :)
I admit I heard only once before about Cristi Mungiu when I saw him at a TV show, some time ago, but I am one of the few that goes once a week at a small cinema to see the european productions.
Anyway, I'm not writing about the movie today (as I haven't seen "4 months, 3 weeks and 2 days" yet) and not even about what the big prize at Cannes means...
I just want to thank this guy and his entire crew for taking Romania, even if only for a couple of days, out of the political morass and its daily triviality and for the few tears of hapiness that they brought into my eyes.
No peinting today to comment, but something much more valuable.
I'm not very good at expressing my feelings, mostly because I don't have too many feelings and, for the few I have, well, I just prefer to keep them for myself. But, I'll make an exception today, for an exceptional man as it's his birthday and letting him know what I feel might be a "present" that he'd like.
He is a Japanese "lost" in Bucharest whom I accidentally met less than 5 months ago and which is, by far, the person with the purest soul that I have ever known. And even if he doesn't want to accept this, he digs a little bit of kindness from absolutely everybody he gets in contact with, 1st as a response to his huge kindness, and then, inevitably, in the relationships with others.
So, I have to thank him for giving me back (partially:) ) the faith (that I've lost many years ago) in people's kindness and purity.
Happy birthday, Marcos! And never forget that, because of who you are, you are the richest man in this world!
There are very few things that sensitize my (frozen) soul and amid them I could name new borns/babies and old couples that, as incredibly as it may seem, still love each other after half of a century or more. If I wouldn't have seen such couples with my own eyes, I would certainly say that love is just the invention of the feeble ones (at this moment, I just don't say this all the time:) )Anyway, how many of us think about (self) oldage? And, if doing this, what is the overall feeling? Well, excepting the inherent sadness coming from the social problems that seem to increase proportionally with the fellow's age and to reach their peak exactly in the moment when a human being should normally just rest and enjoy his last years on this planet, very few of us see themselves as ill, needing continuous care and alone.
You might have no kids, single with no hopes (or caught in an unhappy relationship) and be in your early 30s, you'd still imagine yourself travelling with your half when being in your 60-70-80s or reading stories to your 5 grandsons/granddaughters.
Reading these lines from above you might conclude that people are very optimistic.
Nothing more false... The truth is that people prefer to believe in miracles and in 180degrees bends in their lives without doing anything. Still, these foolish hopes are somehow good. Good because sometimes (like 1 in a million cases) miracles do exist :)
Let me talk a bit about this painting which represents an old person's face, alone in a splitted pretty colour uniform background.
There are no other faces in this background and very rarely a splash can be noticed. So, this guy was a solitary all his life and with not too many memorable moments.
That's why he has no grandchildren around, he's not travelling and there no half for him in this painting ;)
This is probably one of the least abstract of my paintings (or, at least, this is how it appears to be). The paradise and the expections of the "world"/life after death are pretty common subjects and you can find them in almost any book/paper/blog/magazine and almost each painter has one painting about this.
It's in the the human nature to expect better things to happen somewhere in the future (this life or another:) ) and to rennounce fighting for better right now. Of course, since it's much easier to wait instead of acting...
Well, for me paradise is here, in this world. That's why you don't see winged angels playing the harps here, but mountines, rivers, sky (where the big fish eats the small fish - exactly like in this world), hills, a house and what I call "the center of earth". For this "center of earth", I let your imagination run wild ;) and you'll see whatever you want to see :).
It took me 20minutes to paint this (which is very short), only because I added here pieces of my memories.
Eden is nothing more than a series of great moments in life (mine, yours, everybody's) which are, of course, (very) short. But take the bright side, if they last forever, they become part of your normality and you'll never appreciate them as being great :)
Don't fool yourself with the wonderful moments you'll have "after", enjoy what you have now and for what you don't have.. well, just do your best to get it (nobody will put it in your sack, especially when you keep it well closed)
In this painting (very much related to the "two bodies" painting), I tried to show two halves of some human face attributes: half of the eyes and half of the mouth.
It's easy to see that this is far from being a human face. But even with so little clues, it's not hard to see it as a face. So, are the human beings so easy to identify?:) Probably yes, which is normal as they are identified by other human beings :)
Let's see what this human face substitute can tell.. The story will be short, since there are so little things to talk about.
Starting with the eye, the 1st thing to notice is that this is an orange eye. Why? Has the orange color a meaning? Orange is related with the sensual/sensorial needs, be they pure sexual or combined with some incipient need of affection. Usually, a passion for the orange color means the desire of satisfying the physical needs, of maximizing the pleasures but (and this is a big BUT) the final "scope" is getting to that moment of dead calm. It is not really the case of this person, as the eye ball is pretty large reveiling a state of excitement.
The 2nd thing to talk about is the half of the mouth. Its color is very near to the normal one, still the red is obviously enhanced and the lips' dimensions are pretty big. They just come to bond what the eye is already saying. But, the red is not so red, it's a cherry-red, which has a different interpretation than the sexual, agressive red. Cherry-red symbolises the romantic love...
Well, if you're a color interpretation fan, you'll find in the background tones much more contradictions ;)
You'll not read here about my opinions regarding (trans)sexual stuffs. The only reason is that I have no opinion excepting that, from my point of view, everyone should do exactly what (s)he feels with the only limitation of not hurting the others.
So, let's get a bit into the history of this painting.. Even it's not really my type of novels, I loved "The Picture of Dorian Grey" - Oscar Wilde. Probably most of you read it.. It's about a handsome guy that is painted by a friend, the portrait is wonderful but it is also alive: Dorian remains young&beautiful forever (not really forever - as he dies at a moment:) ), but the painting changes reveiling all the vices and the miserable life of Dorian. The painting is the visual version of his soul, which is not at all so pure and handsome as Dorian's appearance.
I was painting this when a friend asked me "What's with this freak?" and I said "this is Dorian Grey" , more as a joke.
How much of what we are can be really seen when the others are watching us? How much of what we are we accept? How much we understand?
The answer for the 1st question is usually a quick one: "the others see how much we let them see". And this is partially true, we want some people to see more, some people to see less, some people to see nothing. But, (especially) when we want some people to see more, we do a bit strange thing: we let them see what we think they'd like to see, not what we are. Pretty a paradox, but we hide the most from the people we really care about mainly because of a fear to not dissapoint them. (I'll not talk more on this, lots of shrinks already did it)
Well, well.. but what has this painting to do with all this stuff?! Well, the face in this painting is far from being interfluent: the eyes are visibly different, the nose has a color that has nothing to do with the overall face, the ears are disproportionate, the lips might give the impression of smiling but the eyes are sad, etc...
Why all these? (after all, I'm not such a poor painter :) ). Let's imagine this person is in front of a bunch of different people: people he would like to attract, people he hates, people he loves. And he transmits some signals (the ones I was talking about: he lets some people see something, he hides other things, etc). What's the result? A non-human face.
"This never happens", you'd say and you'd be right ;)
But have you seen paintings that grow ugly and old? No, because it never happens :)
