I achieved this by respecting them, by appreciating their differences in vibration, by listening to their essence tell me about the existence they would have wished for now that I had freed them. I learned colors by accepting the dialogue, and from this initial power struggle, a creative existence was born that gratifies me every day.
Goodÿ - Gilles EUGENE (May 2022)
The physicochemical mechanisms of our human nature offer us enormous potential to analyze and understand our environment by « resonance » with our interiority. By interiority, I mean everything that occurs as a process in our body, in our cells, consciously or not, in contact with what I therefore conceive as being external to my being.
These mechanisms are most often educated by our life experiences from the first echoes felt in the womb that allowed our essence to be born one day to be revealed to the world, and thus begin our existence in the human community and cosmic balance. And, this, until our end. This end which is a beginning for some, and a finality for others, a finitude of our existence.
What does this have to do with colors, you might ask? Everything!
All my thoughts are based on human biology, due to my initial training (science and medicine). Talking about my practice solely from the perspective of colors is a very complicated exercise for me, because I have to restrict both my fields of reflection and the angles of approach of my relationship to colors. It is also through constraints, voluntary or imposed, that everything is created.
The colors are enclosed in a tube, a pot, a container from which they must be extracted to submit to the will of the artist who wants to tame them, shape them, caress them, smooth them and bend them to his expectations. Just like this child who is born, the colors enclosed in their containers, are born by this will that I have to reveal them to the world by laying them on the canvas. This birth is multiple just like ours, it is overwhelming, astonishing, passionate, sad sometimes, but always filled with promises, even aborted ones.
When these colors are in their containers, they are inert materials, derived from organic or synthetic pigments, their essences are there. We know that, inside, there are « Colors-substances» more or less liquid with names or codes on the packaging. When I take them out of their containers, they become active materials: they are a burst of matter into a new space. I will limit myself to this part of the "Colors-substances", their textures for painting.
I glimpse them when I open the container, then I feel them, I sense them, each one like a new day, a nascent appetite, a latent desire, a sudden repulsion or an irresistible attraction. I then decide to create a disorder in the world universe, in this balance before the opening of the containers, before the vision or the smell, and in doing so, I arrange them on a support like a palette, to better apprehend them and thus put them at my disposal. This is when the « Colors-substances» are creamy, pasty, consistent. But, when these « Colors-substances» are more flexible, even more liquid, either I transfer them into a smaller container to use them as I wish, or more often, I take them out of the original containers to place them directly on the stretched canvas. These « Colors-substances » undergo in their very essence, in their imprisoned inertia, constraints, tensions due to their confinement.To open these containers is to offer promises. It is to release vibration. But, in removing them from this prison, I still constrain them, sometimes violently, other times with apparent gentleness, but always with a desire for control.
This is when the dance of creation begins. This dance that gives birth to « Colors-substances » active. The « Colors-substances » then emerge from their inert and visibly colored essences to undergo an existence that will depend on me, at least in my thoughts. Just like the newborn, the « Colors-substances » who are born have asked for nothing and especially not to be born. However, we give birth to them and impose names, nicknames and codes on them, just like the human codes assigned by the administration. But, their vibrations impose on us a usage from which we try as best we can to extricate ourselves, even though we have determined that such a color expresses this or that, there are so many possibilities that in the end, we constantly rediscover them.
At this moment of the report to the « Colors-substances », the existence of colors becomes a painter's problem, becomes my problem. Because my painting reduced to the use of colors boils down to resolving sensitive questions: why, how, where?
At this moment, I realize that the vibration of each « color-material » speaks to me through resonance, I conceive its thickness, its transparency, its hardness, its flexibility without any other unit of measurement than our frontal relationship. Because yes, each color resists differently to the tensions that I impose on it. Whether with my painting knife or my brushes and other tools still.
When I started out, I used the « Colors-substances », as their essences imposed on me, as their existence on the palette allowed me. Impasto, superposition, material and transparency were random facts suggested by my sensations. I then sought the sensitivity of each color to express my ideas. At that time, I had the impression of coloring and the « Colors-substances » rejected all my attempts. No creation had any final resonance. To overcome this brief moment, I abandoned drawing for a moment, to become one with the colors.
To do this, I created a work plan allowing me this path in order to tell a story of the world that I had been studying since I was 6 years old, and thus be able to return to drawing. I have thus projected around 20 years of creations by stages, periods, collections, series… I called this work plan imposed by the colors « A look at the evolution of the world », a guiding thread that would underpin my approach and my quest through colors. Not a quest for who I am or other questions of that kind... a purely pictorial quest, a quest for mastery of colors to tell the world what I had and what I have to tell it.
This journey through colors allowed me to adapt to their resistances, then it allowed me to resonate with their essences, what they are outside of my will, and to feel the vibrational level of each of them. Not by approaching my hand or looking at them, but by materializing in my soul, my interiority, the color that should go here or there. I had no need to know their names, at least in my studio, just as I had no need to remember the name of an individual: only the relationship was memorized in this sensitive memory.
THE « Colors-substances » became another self, like a continuation of the initial reflection. I conceived the works, the titles, the colors within myself.I created my scenographies without having designed any canvas, everything was realized by resonance. Over time, I accepted this relationship, which imposed certain constraints on me in return: I need to have a certain quantity and precise colors of « Colors-substances » before starting a collection.
This process has stayed with me to this day.
I arrange the containers by category, each color in its place. When I paint, I know what color and density I need. I can't explain it to you in terms of measurements, microns, volumes, or layer thicknesses. I can simply describe the relationship over time.
I learned from « Colors-substances » how to speak to those who will view the final work. I got some « Colors-substances » that they let me divert them, disguise them, remove them from their own existence. I obtained not the obedience of the colors, but their complicity. I obtained this by respecting them, by appreciating their differences in vibration, by listening to their essence speak to me of the existence they would have wished for now that I have freed them. I learned from the colors by accepting the dialogue, and from this initial power struggle, a creative existence was born that gratifies me every day.
Goodÿ - Gilles EUGENE, Artist author. Excerpt from the meeting/debate on color harmony, the CFC theme for the International Color Days, May 21, 2022
