I’m not interested in the ‘gaze.’ I don’t want to be looked at. I want to hide behind my paintings. I want to be invisible – the ultimate ambition. There’s charm in being invisible. What women do, has to be subliminal. Not bliminal, like men. I want to be transparent, to live between the walls. I remember my father’s studio in Connecticut. There was a pencil sharpening machine which fascinated me, because it produced the most beautiful rosettes. I thought the shavings from the big block-plane he used for straightening planks were Goldilock’s curls. Matta and Breton came to the house once and spent the afternoon with us. They showed me lots of tricks to do with pencil and paper. Exquisite corpses. How to make silhouettes with torn paper. You use the torn paper like a template, smudging the edges with coloured crayons, and chains of paper dolls cut with nail scissors. I remember cutting out hearts from coloured paper and sticking them on sheets of paper, listening to the gramophone – a box with little men inside. My childhood wasn’t really controlled, or not controlled in the way I wanted it to be. I retreated into my cutouts and crayon drawings, which I could control. I carry my father’s village inside me: the lake, the intrigues. I can recognize it immediately. It’s not Manhattan, even though I was born there. I recognise it in the background of Byzantine icons. With icons, first came encaustic, then egg tempera. The tradition survived, and the rocks of Mount Sinai reappear in Cretan icons painted a thousand years later. I’m a sixties artist. Bright colours. Acid greens. Orange. Acidity. Love of nature and distrust of politics. I wanted to live in the country in a William Morrissy way. Withdraw into nature. Today, I’m overcome by the green tidal wave of spring. A tractor in the distance makes the same hum as the bees in the almond blossom. A man pruning the olive trees is undressing them as vigorously as if
he were plucking dead chickens. The purple Alium I transplanted years ago has spread, the carnations from Afghanistan are also on the move. Self-seeded fennel is putting up tufts all over the place. The Euphorbia is doing much too well, a purge will have to take place.
The artist’s line is short-hand. It’s a summary.
There are two ways of making lines. The first involves a thin strip of colour, a path between the shapes, a guide. The second involves the meeting of shapes: the vibrant line between the colours. Land and water – the sea’s edge dividing two masses. To create a melodious composition, you make a cat’s cradle of lines. This compositional structure is attached to the four edges of the paper, the boundary.
Paintings require many layers. Goauches are immediate. It’s the technique
Matta taught me when I was three and a half. It’s automatic. Choose the
colours closest to your feelings and the lines closet to your inclination. I feel
so happy afterwards. There is no need for words. Afterwards, I don’t think
of anything. You become out of your mind. It’s meditation. It’s gardening. It’s
prayer. I don’t know what I’ve done after a painting is finished. My life has had
a lot of disruption, painting is my retreat.
Maro Gorky, February 2025