Inner

        LANDSCAPES

 

At the beginning of this series of paintings I wanted to avoid colour, anything translating harmony and decorative display. The idea and desire was to create an inner description of internal perception.

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Working with only black and white oil paints gave transmutations to alchemy. I wanted to develop my inner voice made of emotions, moods, and visions.

The goal was not to present an attractive result but something imponderable, and questionable.

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When I finished preparing the series of around forty oil paintings on paper, looking thoroughly at their possible meaning, I felt that most conveyed drama, solitude, despair, and emptiness. 

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My more recent travels took me to the foreign shores of Armenia, Turkey, Ethiopia, and Ukraine. In my view, since the ‘Inner Landscapes’ descriptions are embedded in silence, I decided to include poetry, describing war, solitude, relationships, and migration.

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I went back to read a considerable number of poets of all kinds. From Romantics like Friedrich Schiller, Alexander Pushkin, and Mikhail Lermontov, whom I admire, and moved toward the war poets, from Guillaume Apollinaire, Wilfred Owen, and others to include those poets and writers I was always interested in and came to realise that my past interest in Franz Kafka, Arthur Rimbaud, and Federico Garcia Lorca remains.

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One of my favourites is the one called THE DEPARTURE. Every time I read it, I feel very touched. I found the poem very unsettling. For whatever reason, I think all the time about the great composer Dmitri Shostakovich, the 12th Symphony. The sound of the trumpets.

I can only hope that you find interest in this series of works on paper, and it may bring you into the mood to contemplate, relate, and dialogue with them.

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Now, living in London for a long while, I am involved in the visual arts, paintings, prints, Artists’ Books, and short films. The short films have their scripts based on writers such as Guy de Maupassant OUT THERE, 10 min, Dino Buzzati THE INQUISITION, 26 min, Charles Baudelaire ENIVREZ VOUS, 4 min, Paul Verlaine PAUVRE GASPARD, 5 min. I have recorded poems such as The Drunken Boat LE BATEAU IVRE by Arthur Rimbaud, 10 min.

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The short films are on YouTube.

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I studied for over four years in Toulon, South of France, at the Conservatoire du Théâtre à Toulon, before obtaining a grant to attend the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts et Techniques du Théâtre in Paris, rue Blanche.

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Thereafter, I played and acted in different theatres and venues such as Theatre 347, rue Chaptal under the direction of Marcel Lupovici in the play called LA BALLADE DU GRAND MACABRE, and participated in a rock Opera as an actor and singer in the troupe LA REVOLUTION FRANÇAISE at the Palais des Sports, Porte de Versailles, Paris before touring France under the direction of Michel de Ré.

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In Toulon, I would recite and attend the Club des Poètes in Marseille as I was extremely interested in reading plays, philosophy, and poetry. Later, after moving to Paris, I was fortunate to be able to recite poems at the Club des Poètes, rue Bourgogne under the supervision of the director of the venue, Jean Pierre Rosnay.

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Another experience, that I can recall with deep affection was when I participated in a Flamenco dance group based in Paris. Manolita and Rafael Aguilar, the directors, came to the drama school to choose students from La rue Blanche, and École de théâtre to tour France, Belgium, and Germany. That tour lasted a year and it was a wonderful experience.

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Et VIVE LA POÉSIE

Hervé Constant January 2023