Artist Statement

The need to create is not accidental. It feeds on an existential quest and reverberates in other areas of one's life. Direct carving has been since 2008 my "ordinary habit," in the words of Ann Cvetkovich, "a way to build the spiritual warrior self". It is a spiritual journey, a natural process that brings balance to my mind and body. T. S. Eliott writes in his article Tradition and the individual talent that "the more perfect the artist, the more completely separate in him will be the man who suffers and the mind that creates; the more perfectly will the mind digest and transmute the passions that are its material." I can't say whether Eliott is correct. What I know is that I haven't separated in me the person who suffers and the mind that creates.

My own subjective taste brings me closer to Venus of Willendorf with rounded buttocks and breasts than to the exquisitely shaved Michelangelo's David. Closer to us, 20th-century artists such as Brancusi, Giacometti, and Modigliani are guiding my own artistic quest. Artists need the inspiration to follow a fragile dream. The mystery of creation is to penetrate the uncreated. Like an incursion into another dimension between what is, what is not, and what will be, there is that fourth dimension, which is the state of becoming, changing constantly. That is the creative motion. Only when the work is done we wonder about the breath of life in a sculpture and the transcendental dimension of the artist's endeavor. 

Muir Wood, 2023

Tel un dialogue entre mon âme et l’Univers,  j’ai conscience de la portée philosophique de mon questionnement et concède que mon approche porte davantage les stigmates de mon doute philosophique qu’elle ne révèle ma quête artistique. La vie aux accents mythiques a donné naissance à une expression intuitive de l’art, mais la capacité de lire les signes et symboles éthérés n’est plus et le sommeil s’approfondit. L’intellect devenu roi enferme au donjon l’intuition prisonnière. L'intuition est morte, foulée au pied par la raison victorieuse. L’évolution  à travers les temps n’absout pas l'être humain de l’empoussièrement de ses pieds spirituels. La vie n’est pas un fleuve tranquille qui commence en amont et termine dans l'océan de l'outre monde. Elle se perd dans les méandres et crée des lacs fabuleux, des cascades gigantesques et irrigue la terre. La vie est faite de périodes saccadées, toutes différentes les unes des autres de l’explosion créative au silence en passant par des instants où l'angoisse oppressante est reine (La vie n'est pas un fleuve tranquille, 9 avril 2011)