Since the beginning of my career, my daily research and my work are meant to keep a record as a journal artist, echoing his environment as a day to day  turbulences seismograph, here and there, and onwards – later. Whether at the workshop or outside, overseas or here , I write, I engrave , I mark the time line that passes by / flies away , record it, archive it, and blog it too.

 

I’m closed to the press, near my laptop or be my own Canon’s prisoner ; I note, mean leaving that life, capturing its sudden emotions that do affect me . Materials overlays, layers of time, ink films and various techniques mixtures. My visual language is based on the duality of two principles : one is an intuitive gesture and the other is formal as an aesthetic stand. These works do not aim at a depiction but are rather more a venue for reflection , creation and vertigo.

 

In the beginning … words , those tucked away in books, especially from poets, also words just heard , involuntary indiscretion , heard in city bus, in the street , in private or in the crowd. In that silence – I hear the sounds of life, words lightly touch me , affect me , touch over me , within me . In the solitude of my workshop I hear them again , rewrite them on a white surface – spreading them as a medium, then as signs, as forms , I rebuild them step by step until showing their inner rhythms.

 

I claw that matrix, that paper, until blindness, until meaningless, I erase, I hide and shroud them to deliver that infinite silence coming after sound. Ink fluidity and graphite impermanence do cooperate in the writing of that interiority . That sheer support  and the fragility of paper are ideal containers like echo chamber or desert for : dream and fantasy.

Over time, engravings i.e. its rituals , smells , its slowness  take me until delivery of my artist books ;  today, after years of practice around suites and loose pages, I am bringing in these hollow hands what were once scattered leaves. Here I am : researcher to gather both texts and images and bring them in a common place. Words rub my images, so intuitively ; an affinity that often causes wonderful author / artist encounters. Both images and artist’s book come into being and join in another outlook tuned … somewhere.

Denise Pelletier

translate by my friend … LR