VERA DÀVID
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artist statement
What makes me paint?
The sheer joy of doing it. It gives me boundless pleasure in more ways than
one: sensually, emotionally, and intellectually. It gives me total satisfaction.
It gives me a sense of liberty. It allows me to express anything, and everything.
Or at least, it provides me with an opportunity to try.
I want to share my joy of painting with you.
I am also a visual storyteller. I have a lot to say. Of course, I am aware that
there may well be a discrepancy between what the painter intends to express
and what the viewer absorbs.
My paintings act as doors. Enter one and you will be transported into my world
without ever having left your own. Will you take the mantle of Orpheus, or that
of Alice? The choice is yours. Feel free to discover every nook and cranny.
Should you find the very interpretation I intended, we obviously have something
in common, and that makes me happy. Should you happen upon an interpretation
that I never thought of, it is fulfilling to know that you have found something
special to you, and that makes me happy too.
Deep is the well of the past. There are so many secrets buried in the depths
of human experience. I am interested in origins, in individual and collective
memory, the traces left by time. What can we achieve for ourselves, what can
we achieve in the world? What can be passed on in the relatively short span
that is human life? Emotions, relations, objects. What remains of all these
as they pile up layers upon layers well beyond our life? Or in the eyes and
recollections of those living next to us? All the beautiful and ugly traces
of destruction and reconstruction. Paintings feed on memories. They are influenced
by time, by dreams, by pain, by joy, by fear, by love.
I come from Central Europe (Hungary). I carry with me the loaded baggage of
judeo-christian idealism. I was present at the collapse of the Berlin Wall,
I went to Morocco to discover a different culture and found myself, and I came
to Montreal to be part of the incredible caleidoscope of global existence that
infuses this city with individual and collective histories from all over.
All these influences, all these memories and experiences are simultaneously
present in my mind when I paint. They guide my hand into reproducing the layers
of translucent, yet concealing colours you'll find in my oil paintings. The
same approach characterizes my electro-images, as well as my works produced
on collated paper, where the aspect of layering is present both in the material
and the method of painting.
I studied art and painting in Budapest, computer graphics in Berlin and Japan,
the works of European old masters in Italy and the Netherlands, as well as works
of great masters in the workshops of Casablanca, Essaouira, and Fez.
I constantly seek out light, which sometimes comes from afar, but is never totally
absent. I do not believe in a strict division of figurative and abstract modes
of representation. Just as we would never accept to give up our reason for the
sake of our emotions, or vice versa, I believe it is unreasonable to expect
exclusive choices in the modes of representation.
Painting is struggling. Struggling with having to arrive at decisions at every
stage throughout the creative process - but who says painting is easy?
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