Action Painting with Lepolsk Matuszewski
Session 3, AIP1
Watching Lepolsk Matuszewski in action, even if only through video, is a fascinating experience. He usually starts by writing a statement on canvas, usually the title of his work and his name. He then proceeds to cover it with scribbles and paint, with movement and tension and action. The art lies not only in the finished product but rather the whole process---thus the term "action painting". He's not afraid of covering and repainting over parts of his work. I think that's why he's fascinating---to create you must first destroy.
I then proceeded to continue with my experiments from Session 2, but this time with colours.
Because the process of action painting is more important than the final results, below I have attached several photographs of the painting, at different stages of its conception. The beauty of action painting lies in the fact that it is temporary---the art is of the moment and not of the art itself. I started the painting with a line that had been on my mind for quite some time, and suited the situation well.
The Wanderers, the Watchers,
the Shadows, the Strangers;
All sing the Lullaby of Quidam
Quidam is the name of a Cirque du Soleil production, one of my favourites (though I haven't got the chance to watch it live... yet). The Quidam is a faceless man, and along the years I have created my own interpretation of Quidam: a creature that is both everyone and yet no one, anonymous yet omnipresent. A watcher, a stranger, a wanderer... a shadow. We are him and he is us.
The poem, hiding beneath the painting, is essentially the Quidam.
When Matuszewski writes his name in the beginning of every painting, he is defining the painting as him, a pure, raw manifestation of who he is, at that moment. His works also resemble graffiti, and I tried to incorporate that in the writing and the semi-unfinished ("peeling") background. The work itself reminds me of explosions from electrical cables, hence its name, "TWANG", the sound a tense cable makes when disturbed.
The above is done with acrylic and ink on canvas, roughly 100 x 130 cm.
Ink mixed with water, at a 1-3 proportion, is spilled and then dabbed off to create that washed look.
QUESTIONS
If action painting can only be fully appreciated while in progress, does that mean all action painting galleries should be immediate?