mixed media on canson 24/32cm – (2018)
You will never drown by diving into yourself *
When i started it quite some time ago, I was not pleased with it (not that i’m now either). It was a chaotic character without a lot to say besides its chaos. But once i decided to finish it, then it got even more chaotic but at least i was able to recognize some meaning and to have some matter to work with.
An artwork, like anything surrounding us, is just a tool or alibi to find a way back into our own mind and to try to connect to both ancient / new parts of our being (which are most of the time connected to other beings). You can notice this face looks a little crazy, but it is not. In fact, to me, the beard is here as a sign of an antique wisdom (to me the most amazing one, i can only invite you to read Epictetus). Philosophy, as an inner dialogue with our Nature-s (rather than the academic one) is something absolutely important if we want to evolve and reach the best version of our self. Thinking of that dialogue made me realize there were two faces into the main character. You can notice one on the left with beige hair and the other one of the right with black hair. Which implies the share of ideas within one self, the reflexion & consciousness of the link between thoughts, actions and their consequences on others as well as our self.
Of course, once you start to entertain this kind of inner talks, it can be a potential inner conflict as well. Maybe this is why those two faces … are facing each other. But this is why it makes it very important to have a balance. Here, the balance is symbolized with the main face / character. Indeed, the amount of different opinions, thoughts, frames, etc we can find in Life, the meaning of this diversity is not to be found into a conflictual situation, but into a virtuous cooperation to both create (and also being created by) this Whole. Once again, the way we are looking at things, will define the way we experience them, it goes from a breeze on your face, to someone making noise next to you. You can choose to feel bothered by it or just celebrate all the differences incarnations of Life and move on.
The title JANUS came very late, i even thought i will not find one. Then i remembered the beard and this antique philosopher feel. And i also added to the “keywords” some kind of twin-dialogue. I naturally came across Janus. The first image of it i saw was this statue of a two-faces bearded deity, usually described as the god of transition because he looks at the future and the past. I realized that … the main face made out of the two faces in my drawing, is looking at the present, the one we are, in-between the one we were and the one we’ll be. It all made sense, because as we know, present is all there was, all there is and all there ever will be. And here was Janus, a drawing made out of chaos with crazy eyes but still showing the way to a balance we always have to renew, a good lesson that wisdom can come from anything, even the ones looking a little scary or weird.
PS: i could have add some random things like, under the eye of the right face, you can see two little things looking like spermatozoids. One is black and the other is white ( positive/negative ). A reminder of what i’ve mentioned about the way we choose to look at things will generate into us X or Y interpretations. The left face’s ear is actually a bird, you can see a little pink tongue coming out of the beak, because sometimes things we don’t want to hear just fly away right after we’ve listened to them. Still about the left face, under the eye you can see a couple of blue circles. They go bigger and bigger, it shows the evolution. But inside of it, the black part of it grows proportionally. It is to echo this saying “the more things changes the less they change” and this is why this character has is mouth shut when the other on the right seems to shout something or to implore it to listen etc … it’s up to your interpretation *