SLM exhibits once more at Salle Aquitaine in Monflanquin, a place well known to her by now. She will be surrounded with her acquaintances from the GEM and her personal friends from the region where life is pleasant and favorable to art. Throughout the year, she has painted for herself and for us, too. She has anticipated our friendly welcome, our attentive observation and comments.
The vast Salle Aquitaine is a place for promenade, an inward journey from the outside, from our daily routine to the artistic reality of an exhibition. "Transitions", such is the title and such it is.
On hanging her paintings, a slight hint of concern and a veil of mystery: brightly colored paintings are hung next to almost monochrome ones. "Transitions" exhibition proves an initiatory journey from darkness to light, abundance of colors to sobriety.
"Genèse", from first to seventh day and the dreadful jump to "Apocalypse 21" / "Revelation 21", a span of history and time; then, from "Graphisme" (1 to 3) to "Manuscrit" (1 to 5), through "Chiaroscuro" (1 to 3) thus oscillating between light and darkness.
The violent contrasts of her pallet may be a dominant feature of SLM’s style: between oil and acrylic, her paintings can be stripped to grayscale characteristics and a range of blacks, or move to excessive colors held in the mesh of a drawing; while reversely, some lines are released in prevailing graphics which are ready to escape the canvas frame.
A point of difference from previous years: the use of gold, silver and bronze colors. Yet, those are colors too! Most certainly, SLM’s chosen themes deserved them.
“Painting is not a hobby but a full time job like any other work. You cannot count the hours, as time is suspended”,
She says in her way to address and fine tune her art.
SLM reminds me of Nicolas Boileau’s two verses:
"Vingt fois sur le métier remettez votre ouvrage,
Polissez-le sans cesse et le repolissez".
As ever equal to herself, and yet ever changing,
Sylvie Maynard has abandoned the cities she once traveled on her canvases,
New York, Dublin, London, her topics in 2014 summer.
London…
Is it the prefiguration of some "Brexit" which induces
Her attraction to spirituality, bringing us back to immemorial time?
Big Bang for some, which today’s news may illustrate.
As for Sylvie, here is the description of the creation of the world through artistic creativity.
The mystery is deepened in her choice of some of her titles: Ephod, Chiaroscuro,
The materialization of a week in which all beings and things appeared.
A seventh day of gold, silver and bronze
May be representative of the supreme awards in the stadium.
On top of that, colored layers are suggesting some rest in the shade of the protective net
Of a rising star at its brightest.
But it is time I came down to earth because
As they used to say in Rome
"The Tarpeian rock is near the Capitol"
All my best,
Hervé Laurent - President of GEM
SLM exhibits Salle Aquitaine
SLM is welcomed by Hervé Laurent for the GEM and the town Mayor, Mrs. Nathalie Founaud-Veysset.
Photo DDM. M-P. Rabez
SLM, as a painter artist, belongs to the type of creators which is difficult to characterize. She is almost unclassifiable as she shows so many varied skills! Today, on the walls of Salle Aquitaine, she offers a range of very diverse expressive paintings that she hung according to their "pictorial genre": here, a series representing Genesis and Revelation, themes that are dear to her heart. Her heart seems willing to let go and convert to a life filled with colors... through the sacred texts which inspired her.
"We get information in bits ... Each one of us has to reconstruct part of the mystery”, she explains with great gentleness, standing in front of her two creations of color layers. Her triptychs are made of white on black and/or black on white; they show as many harmonies calling and complementing one another, three by three.
SLM is a sensitive artist, a hypersensitive one. Yet, with friendly support around her, she tries to heal her wounds or rather learns how to better live with them. Doesn’t she say of herself: "My wounds will explode in colors, in stone broken, and it will be as violent as bloodshed. I paint against your absence, against the echoes of your absence in my heart ... I paint and carve the stone remembering the sound of your voices, of the guitar, yours ". She also says that "Painting is real work; the drawing vibrates under the colors. It is drowned in them, yet remains imperious."
SLM is a complete artist, a complex artist. But she is warmhearted, sober too, so unique ... and essential!
Discover her exhibition until July 4, every day from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
"M.-P. Rabez, La Dépêche du Midi"
Published on 06/30/2016 at 3:55, Updated on 06/30/2016 at 08:20
