There is a vocabulary within my body that I have never
chosen to learn. It has developed over
time. A colour, a light, a sound, a
texture have all left their mark on it. Not a
memory to be recalled, but rather a way of
recognising, associating, responding.
This vocabulary continues to grow. Every
experience adds a sign to it. Every drawing
uses some of them and invents others. I do not
know all the rules, but my hand knows how to
use them.
It’s been raining since this morning.
The sky is heavy, laden with a substance that
seems to slow the world down.
Mozart’s Requiem accompanies the silence
of the studio.
Today, I desire nothing other than that which is genuine: the beautiful, the minute, the sensitive, the true.
I simply try to bring my existence into harmony with life.
I return to my drawing.
Burgundy appears, then plum, sky blue,
khaki green, pink.
The movement is immediate.
It does not seek its path; it already
knows it.
My hand does not tremble.
It moves with a precision that is neither
control nor improvisation.
This movement is not instinctive. It stems from everything that
has gone before it. Colours seen, materials
encountered, sounds heard, drawings already
made. All of this has gradually built a language
that my body can draw upon without having to
translate it.
Turquoise hatching settles
upon the sky blue.
A few neon pink dots gently shift
the rhythm of the whole.
I don’t need to search for what these
colours mean. They already belong to
my vocabulary. Their proximity creates a
sensation that the gesture recognises before I
can explain it. One colour calls out to
another. A hatch changes the rhythm. A dotted line
opens up a new possibility.
Little by little, the music ceases to accompany the drawing.
It becomes the drawing.
I slip into a sort of graphic
trance where time loses its chronology.
Sensations flow without needing to
become words. Sound influences the rhythm,
light influences the colours, colour influences the gesture.
The boundaries between the senses become less
distinct. Everything becomes part of the same vocabulary.
The drawing takes in a part of it and adds
something to it.
As I draw, this language expands. A
colour relationship encountered today may
reappear differently tomorrow. One hatching will
call forth another. What the gesture discovers
joins what it already knew.
The vocabulary is never complete. Each
drawing speaks to what already exists and adds a
sign to the language.
