| Revolutions are sweet as long as discoveries are transformed into work, into days filled with this production of images, with writing, drawing, and collage, which are my three main, parallel techniques. However, ideas are often buried, like annotations jotted down in exercise books that have been put away, relegated to the attic or notes hidden under the mattress or tucked away in the pockets of winter clothes; in other words, they regularly resurface only to be buried again until they are needed. |  |
Béatrice Cussol
Revolutions are sweet as long as discoveries are transformed into work, into days filled with this production of images, with writing, drawing, and collage, which are my three main, parallel techniques. However, ideas are often buried, like annotations jotted down in exercise books that have been put away, relegated to the attic or notes hidden under the mattress or tucked away in the pockets of winter clothes; in other words, they regularly resurface only to be buried again until they are needed.
Always and yet again, I ask myself when the transformation occurs between what we perceive and what we create. For example, there is the world of design (design thinks) and the world which enshrouds me, which gives me skins, frills in the form of fabrics and clothing and images that I find and that I keep, and interiors, rooms, corridors of memory which form reversible holes in the shape of photos pasted in the picture when I draw directly on the wall, which, in this case, act as a turn-up or a lining.
In order to make new contributions (a building of buried images), to enrich my current sources with new tributaries, I use these hidden paths (or voices for writing) that trot along behind my baggage or find their way into my wardrobes, fairytale heroines who have not fallen asleep in the clutches of live collective memory, who have their own style and give themselves a style that they themselves choose.
I talk from memory because when I see an image that originates from a hidden, uncovered depth, I draw it immediately. I feel or smell an urgency: it is the smell of paper, associated with that of a slightly musty archive, a watercolor. I actually see a design, not a scene, not a sequence like a memory, not a 3D image, nor anything else, no, only a design. And all of a sudden, I feel an urge to perform the task that awaits me, to store these images that come to me in rapid succession. Thus, I immediately grab a ballpoint pen or a brush that I dip in water or in ink.
Apart from that, when I draw, I do not force myself to imagine something, but I go with my thoughts and stretch my imagination as far as possible. Gradually, they lead me to new characters, which tell me another story, different from the one originally envisaged which appears to have a desire to break free, to unfold. The idea of design is open like something that one does not understand, because we are not interested in understanding, and one can therefore take advantage to draw a dot, a line, a dash, or a stroke. Then comes the painting itself, in other words, work on the matter, the smoothest or liquid, or even one that flakes or makes a grating sound or other material taken from the life of the stain, the puddle, the line.
My house is a temporary abode. I often pass by without ever really managing to ensure that it is the same as before. I have problems with its doors. It’s a question of a world of lining, a place involving the addition of images that still have to be invented, an epic tale of plump girls whose freedom no one can take away without censure. It is also a question of new definitions and promises. I continue, or rather I prolong, I want to experience that which for the time being I am unable to change, and this is how it starts each time: that which haunts us resurfaces during the act of its creation; things pour out, and their development, like a random soup of things that have been said over and over again or remembered, forms the present in which one works either writing or sketching.
