To capture and describe my creative process is like putting music into words – something essential gets lost in translation. How can you record the emotional volume present in the art of listening?
Painting requires experience, dedication, boredom, excitement, dissatisfaction and an eye for possibilities. You have to acknowledge the past and at the same time retune the present without the fear of originality or influence. You have to enjoy the process of painting, playing with variety and assembling style.
I enjoy a visual ensemble that includes the figurative and the abstract, the organic and geometric, the obvious and the elusive. Put them all together and you get an eclectic remix where any one thing can be something else. A portrait can rise out of a still life, a still life can descend into a landscape, a finger is a toe and two legs, slightly parted, might be a whisper.
To make something is to sound its own purpose, its own existence.
“… And then I occasionally introduce forms which have no literal meaning whatsoever. Sometimes these are accidents which happen to suit my purpose, sometimes ‘rhymes’ which echo other forms, and sometimes rhythmical motifs which help to integrate a composition and give it movement… Objects don’t exist for me except insofar as a rapport exists between them or between them and myself.” (De Kooning)
Maja Maljević’s latest exhibition, Horror Vacui, opens at David Krut Projects, 142 Jan Smuts Avenue on 8 May 2014 at 18:00 for 18:30.
To see available artwork please click here.
