WHAT PAINTING MEANS TO ME
Painting allows me to communicate and share ideas and emotions with people, particularly the people who populate my environment, now scattered over a broad area thanks to social networking: I communicate with them through shapes, forms, colours and signs that eventually form a code, which anyone who wishes to seriously confront my painting will have to crack, or at least try to crack it.
In my atelier, work in progress (Sintra, 2020)
Someone who chooses painting as a means of expression has not chosen writing, or music, because if this were so we would be talking about literature and poetry, or musical scales. In any case, mine is not a conventional alphabet, but rather has been invented by me, with such an extreme flexibility and adaptability that it eventually questions its own coding system: that is why I think that art is a radically intimate and subjective language that is rooted in individual freedom, and for that very reason it eventually dynamites the code it establishes. It is evident that I can guide the interested spectator with words, a title or a brief comment, although not so much as an interpretation of the work, but rather as an element the spectator can use if they want to get closer to the work.
"Dicotomies / Day and Night" (Acrylic on canvas - 110cm x 100) (2005)
The artist's creative freedom has the counterpoint of the observer's freedom of interpretation. When the spectator feels attracted, disturbed or excited by the work, they cease to be a stranger to it and become the interpreter, or even the protagonist, of the work, to the extent that they help to give the work meaning, and therefore life. This is how the work is kept alive, through those who decide to talk to it, and it is thanks to the sum of these dialogues, of their continuity in time, that the artist's contribution to society gradually takes root.
"Sintra / Nit d’estiu", for Lord Byron [Triptych - Acrylic on paper - 225cm x 105] (2012)
The plastic arts are essentially visual, and therefore constitute the expression of a given aesthetic: the work of art is an object that the artist places before our eyes, be it a painting, a drawing, a photo or a sculpture. It is evident that sight is not the only sense that is involved in or influences the contemplation of a work of art. But it is the first one. Touch and smell may also be brought into play, the former evidently in the case of the sculpture, and the latter in cases in which the work being observed gives off different odours. Installations, which can feature many elements, and which are usually ephemeral works, can recreate an environment, an atmosphere that generates new and different sensations in each observer. Sight defines a very specific material visual field, in the centre of which lies the work. And it is through the layout of shapes and colours, pictorial description or representation of facts, ideas or situations in figurative art, the distortion of reality or pure abstraction, that the artist seeks to influence the spectator's mood.
“ECLIPSE 1/11: Desolation", for Joan Mitchell [Acrylic on paper - 250cm x 150] [Private collection - Barcelona] (2019) (SOLD)
This tells me that a latent, implicit tension is established between the work of the artist and the observer of the work. The artist has decided that his creation is art. Simply and plainly. I believe that he is empowered to do so by this inalienable right. If our work does not move the spectator, if it does not perturb or alter them, if a dialogue is not established between them both, then we may say that in this case the artist or his work have failed, and we will even have to admit that the work is not art for that specific spectator. And it is not art because it will never be more than a simple material object that has left them indifferent. For this reason, cultural and educational policies prompted by the public sector are particularly important in developing citizens' artistic sensitivities.
"L'interminable été / Triangle vermell d'una nit d'estiu", for William Shakespeare (Acrylic on paper - 70cm x 55) (2007)
"Tribute to the Mediterranean Sea / Maternitat", for Antoni Tàpies (Marble on wood - 110cm x 100) (Private collection - Boston) (1983) (SOLD)
I think, although I am not entirely sure, that art can help to form better citizens. But if the establishment of a dialogue between work and observer is, in my opinion, an indispensable factor that must precede the consecration of a work of art, it is not the only one. Beyond the emotion it conveys to the observer, the work should also be capable of eliciting a reflection, understood as the embodiment of an idea or feeling, distilled through the spectator's sensitivity, interest and intellectual effort. This leads me to a possible definition of the function of art if, as a result of the dialogue that arises between the work and the observer, the latter has an experience that does not leave them indifferent and can even influence or condition them with regard to future behaviours. Art can indirectly be a tool that transforms reality.
"La mer est ton miroir", pour Charles Baudelaire [Diptych - Acrylic on cardboard - 180cm x 120] (2023)
To my mind, memory, intimacy and inner silence are the basis of the creative act. The work is not alien to the artist's consciousness, it is a reflection of the latter, with circumstantial and other permanent elements which an analysis of the overall body of the artist's work and life may help us to know better. Artistic creation is therefore both a conscious and transcendental act that goes beyond pure aesthetic representation. It is an act of individual assertion and of social responsibility that is not perfected until it captures the observer's attention, tension and response. There can be no work of art without an observer. The process of socialisation transforms the work into art.
This is probably why I have allowed more than thirty years to elapse before making my paintings and drawings available to the public, beyond my circle of friends and family. It is neither a coincidence nor a whim. While it may sound presumptuous, I wanted to be personally sure that doing so was worthwhile and that I had something minimally consistent to share with the people around me and with the general public. Beyond ephemeral inspiration. Beyond a fleeting need. Beyond market dictates.
"Praia Grande / Platja del mar dels cels", for Jacint Verdaguer (2021) (Triptych - Acrylic on cardboard - 120cm x 270) (2021)
At the age of ten, I was thoroughly familiar with more than five hundred works in the leading art galleries in the world thanks to the training I had received at home. By the time I was sixteen, I realised that what I painted transcended me and deserved to be classified as art to the extent that it responded to the need to explore a vital space of creation, so exciting, thrilling, distressing, yet at the same time also unknown to me.
“Les fleurs du mal / Le tonnerre et la pluie ont fait un tel ravage, Qu’il reste en mon jardin bien peu de fruits vermeils ..." [Charles Baudelaire - L'ennemi / Les fleurs du mal] - (Acrylic on cardboard - 100cm x 70) (Private collection - Sintra) (2014) (SOLD)
“Pintura iniciàtica - L’origen de tot plegat” (Tempera on paper) (1975)
And since then I have never stopped painting, more or less continually, with varying intensity and an always debatable success, with the intention, now definitely, to share my work with others, observers, spectators, the general public, who will give it meaning, if indeed it has any, and who will perhaps eventually confirm it as ART.
KASIMIR DE DALMAU