INVITATION TO AN INNER TRAVEL,
published in the Intellect Books, Drawing(Journal), Research, Theory, Practice
volume5, issue2, ISSN 20570384 , ONLINE ISSN 20570392

RETURN TO THE INVISIBLE SOURCE OF ART

My work is part of the pursuit of a praxis that implements the infinite possibilities of a spiritual art that geniuses like Vassily Kandinsky and, in particular, Paul Klee established at the beginning of the 20th century as the foundation of an art to both revolutionary and faithful to its vocation of spiritual elevation of man. This art is said to be real by Kandinsky because it disregards the external appearances of the world and does away with the representative and dead conventions of academic art to focus on the material elements of the work. "Every phenomenon is twofold,” says Kandinsky, “both external (occurring in the visible world) and internal (experienced invisibly, felt by the soul)." Spiritual art is thus both concert and abstract because it uses the material elements of drawing - supports, points, lines, shapes, colours etc.- and their countless relationships, according to their inner resonances, invisible to (experienced by) the artist who obeys what Kandinsky calls “inner necessity”, in other words the inner sound of each material and formal element in the composition of the work and the inner or spiritual necessity which imposes itself on the artist through the creative Spirit in him.

My artistic praxis is still part of the most contemporary radical phenomenology. I am indeed seeking to "go to the core" in the duality of their appearance, both visible and invisible. Therefore, as Kandinsky pointed out at the beginning of the 20th century, but also as Michel Henry put forward in his radical phenomenology of life at the end of this same century: "Drawing," he writes, in presenting his book on Kandinsky, "no longer represents external reality but the foundation of our being: our impulses, our strength, our affects and our anguish - our invisible life. Is it possible to paint the invisible, to show it? Yes, if shapes and colours do not belong to the world in the first place, if they have "an inner sound", if in their pure subjectivity, as impressions, they are themselves invisible. The remarkable revolution of abstraction has a spiritual significance. By dismissing figuration - the aesthetic equivalent of modern objectivism, its emptiness and disarray - it leads man back to himself and art to its vocation.”

ART IS MAKING

This return to the invisible and unique source of art and life, I practice first in Nature, faced with ordinary, but truly extraordinary phenomena which are constantly created there and which I experience in myself , in inner resonance, but also in the solitude of the studio, through my practice of art which reveals to me the creative power of life at work in me, as in everything.

This return to the source necessarily involves an asceticism, a ritual, a meditation understood as a suspense of intentional thought, which enables me to "listen" to what M. Henry called "the noise of my birth", that is to say the crucible of the ceaseless and invisible coming to Life in me, and my coming into Life; or likewise the contemplation of Oneself, or the agreement with Oneself which is agreement of the body and the spirit and agreement of one’s spirit and the creative Spirit, essential to reach agreement between feelings and emotions and forms and colours, the accuracy of movement and sensitivity. Drawing is being heart to heart with Oneself, a spiritual and physical art that joins the spirit to the hand, that work together.
Art is thus a permanent struggle against the violence of our time, which by its frightening, ignorant and vain objectivist and industrial power, destroys life in natural nature as in human nature.
Through my works I hope to arouse emotions in others, to elicit an inner journey, a wonderment, a transformation, a mutation, a spiritual awakening. This is for me the vocation of art and the function of the artist.
Art gets lost in explanations, it occurs only in its involvement. And, as Jean Cocteau said: "We don't explain art, it is art that explains.”
MY ART IS TO MAKE LIFE HAPPEN
On paper I welcome the movements of materials, flows, encounters, mixtures of colours, opacities and transparencies.
I don't imitate a created world, I create other worlds.
I am in agreement, in harmony, I am in dance, in love.
I guide the movements by the movements of my body, by the influxes of my soul and my joyful spirit.
I'm not guiding, I'm guided. By the grace of the miracles that appear.
It is inspiration and expiration. It’s Breath. It is a matter of letting go and surrendering to the invisible, giving and creative Life.
It is a question of being amazed at its gifts and thanking it for it.
THE PRAXIS
Before starting work
I choose a sheet of paper.
Every sheet has its own material quality, an internal tension in relation to our body.
I prepare a range of colours with which I have a certain affinity.
Sometimes I let these colours sit for months.
The binding agents are oil and turpentine.
During work
​Coloured fluids flow, slide, rub, overlap, mix, overlay.
My movements and my breathing come into play.
Surrender to materials and the right movements.
Everything is done directly in the range of vision.
Each movement causes a transformation in the drawing space.
A universe has been created.
A drawing is born. It will live its own life.

I conclude by letting Vassily Kandinsky speak: "Today, art is called to save the spirit and to return to humanity its destination, which is spiritual. "

​by Saskia Weyts