FOUND IN TRANSLATION

In conversations with a great artist and friend about my art, he told me that the most important thing in my work was that it spoke of my truth. And in order to talk about my truth, perhaps the starting point was to describe the process and how I came to build it.

 

Yesterday I did a piece that cost me a lot. By this I mean that it was not a work that came out easily and quickly, it took hours. That for me is difficult. It may have to do with my connection with me or what I was trying to get out.

 

I started by preparing the canvas with white paint, the base. This is something very mechanical and does not require much inspiration, but a great symbolic value. I am putting the base, what is going to hold each stroke. Sometimes there is some color, but in this case it was white. Almost imperceptible in contrast to the color of the prepared linen. Being almost unable to see the difference between the whites, it became like an exercise in meditation. I had to concentrate on each stroke, remember where I had put the white, look very closely at the weave of the linen to see where the brush went.

 

Then I had to let the acrylic base dry, and I sat down to look at that blank canvas. With music, because I always have music in my process. As you know, I've been a classical pianist since I was 5 years old, and music is part of me, part of my creative process but also part of the way my brain processes the world. The relationship between my musical brain and the brush, being two ways in which I express myself, is very intimate. The hands I use to make a sound on a piano are the same hands I use to put a stroke on the canvas. There is melody, there is rhythm, there is phrasing in music and in my painting. There has to be a coherence between the stroke, the color and the force. There is chance in the interpretation, but there is also an unconscious structure and a muscular memory that takes years to build. The body knows how it has to feel, even if it is not a rational process.

 

Then I took my graphite stick. It is a very special bar, thick, I have to grip it, not take it delicately like a pencil. My whole body is involved in that first stroke that breaks the silence of the blank canvas. It is the first note, which in a way defines the notes that follow. Three notes form a chord, and that first chord defines the tonality of the piece.

 

As human beings we have listened to music for as long as we can remember, sometimes even mothers play music to their children when they are in the womb. So we are used to listen to it and let ourselves be carried away by it. The feelings that a chord can evoke in our trained mind are automatic. A major chord, a minor chord, a diminished fifth or a ninth, are terms that only a musician knows but that in any human being already evoke a feeling: sadness, melancholy, happiness, suspense, anticipation.

 

That first stroke in graphite, white on black, is my first chord and will define what is to follow.

 

I sit down again to contemplate that first chord on the canvas. I ask myself questions, how does it make me feel, where did it come from, what's next. But I also want to let myself go with my intuition and what my body and mind have in my subconscious. It's almost like a conflict between letting go and controlling.

 

Time keeps passing and I haven't picked up the first color. The color is like the melody in a piece of music. The first chord gives the key but the melody builds on the chord. They are intimately related and transform that first chord.

 

I pick up an oil stick and organize it. The oil sticks dry and a film forms on top. It's another one of my little rituals, to take a palette knife and peel that film off. There are thick sticks, medium sticks, small sticks. The way you hold them in your hand also changes the line that can come out. Some sticks are harder, others softer, maybe it's the pigment that determines that quality.

 

Tactile sensation is also very important on a piano. If you have ever seen a pianist sit down at a piano for the first time, it is common that the first thing is not to produce a sound but to caress the piano. For a long time the keys were covered in ivory, today that practice is clearly not sustainable, so they are synthetic. But the keys will be in direct contact with the hands, the fingertips. There are more than 3,000 nerve endings in the tip of a finger, and many things that can be felt.

 

Sometimes I also caress the canvas before I start. I feel its texture, its resistance. It is very different to pass a stick of oil or graphite on a wooden support, a cotton canvas or a cement wall. There is a lot of interaction between what I feel when I make a stroke, but also what the material gives me back. The same thing happens with the piano, it's not only what happens when I press a key but also what the piano mechanism gives me back and the sound that comes out.

 

No matter how industrialized the construction process of a piano is, there is no two pianos alike. That is why you cannot buy a piano without playing it first, no two are alike.

 

I stand in front of the canvas and make the first stroke. I try not to direct it, to let my body, my intuition and all the sensations I have talked about guide me. The resistance of the canvas, the graphite lines that were already there, the way the oil stick behaves.

 

This is how the composition begins.

 

After that first stroke I sit down again. I don't correct, I don't polish; there is really nothing to correct. It is what it is, it is my truth.

 

I sit down again. Another half hour watching the first chord and the first notes of the melody on the canvas. As the music plays.

 

I'm going for another bar. Choosing the next color is intuitive. It's like a voice in my head telling me "it needs yellow, it needs blue". I'm not thinking about color theory, or what's complementary or what goes well together.

 

I make the next stroke. Sometimes I want the colors to cross and blend, sometimes not. It's just like music.

 

When learning to play piano, one of the most difficult things is to get the hand to travel long distances across the keyboard without the phrases being clumsy and choppy. The fingers go over and under themselves. The difference between a beginner and a pro at the piano is the fluidity of the melody and phrasing. Getting a melody to sound like a conversation, with its connectors and even crutches, but you can't stop in the middle of the phrase to rearrange yourself. For piano students, the teacher writes above the notes the numbers of the finger that should go - "1-3-5-2" - to make the phrase flow. Even a professional pianist, when learning a piece, writes little notes on the fingers to be used in complicated parts.

 

But after many years this becomes automatic. I don't have to think about how to put my fingers and interlock them to get from one side of the keyboard to the other, because my hand, my arm and my body already know how it feels. And yes, it's the whole body. It's the position of the arms, the trunk, the feet (which also have to move on the pedals to get the sentences together). If I had to think about all of that at the same time, I wouldn't be able to play a piece, let alone put intention and feeling into it.

 

I keep looking at the piece and I see that there is a thick stroke and a much thinner and delicate one. I'm missing something, I'm missing a more complex and powerful chord that makes the whole piece fit together. I look for a bar of the same color, but thicker. And I make another stroke.

 

I sit down again. Now I have a chord, the beginning of a melody and something taking shape. But something is still missing.

 

A piece of music also has to have balance. Between the chords, the melody and the rhythm. But also, depending on what I want to express, within the limits of the keyboard. I can make a piece that has only high tones, or low tones, and that will clearly give a result. But our ear is used to having a balance between highs, mids and lows.

 

In a traditional band there is a voice, a guitar, drums and bass. The guitar carries the chords, the voice the melody, the drums the rhythm. But the bass, the bass is very important. For the untrained ear it is sometimes difficult to recognize the bass, but if it is not there, it is needed.

 

The different strokes and colors on the canvas have the same purpose for me. Each one deals with a component of the work. At first glance it may not be easy to distinguish what each one does, but when one of them is missing, it is necessary.

 

Half an hour more and I finally hear the color that is needed. I don't choose something very obvious or academically relevant, but it's the one that calls to me.

 

I do the final lines and that's it. I feel that something is complete, the piece is complete. There is rhythm, there is melody, there are highs, mids and lows. It's unconscious, but it makes sense.

 

For the viewer who connects with what I've done, that sense of cohesion will be clear and that's what will draw them in and connect with the work.

 

My feelings and sensations while composing it will somehow connect with your feelings and sensations. They will probably be unconscious, like when we listen to a piece of music. They will make sense.

 

As non-musicians and non-artists we may not understand what is technical behind a work or a piece of music. We may not know that according to color theory there are things that go well, there are strong and weak strokes, or the use of space is coherent. Suddenly we don't know if the song is in the key of C or D minor, or if we use a chord inversion to highlight the bass. But what we will know is whether a song sounds good or bad, whether it transmits us or not. And the same with the art, we will know if it was well done or not, if it communicates or not, if it makes sense.

 

There are songs that will take us 5 minutes to compose, others hours and others a lifetime, but in the end, whoever we share it with, in the brief minutes that they stand in front of the work or listen to the song, will know if they like it or not, if it made them feel something or not.