The forests are yours, Father
Those that flourish despite the storms.
What I love about your work, more than anything else, is witnessing a series of works that come together and respond to each other, telling us secret stories along the way. The studio has been my haven since childhood. When I come here, something inside me softens, settles and rejoices. Life with its uncontrollable violence, the birds of prey, the hunters, the wolves, the fate that befalls, all disappear upon entering.
In the first drawings, I thought I was witnessing reminiscences of jetties, seashores, lunar landscapes that leave us with an aftertaste of wind and destruction. Then the piers transformed, the stones turned into branches, and the broken forests appeared. So powerful in their savagery. I look at them, and breathe a little wider. I feel that the light is somewhere in gestation. It's coming. It speaks to us in the hollow of our ears. And as the forests unfold, the day arrives, after two months' absence, when I enter the studio and see him.
The tree. Alone, in the middle of the plain. Vital.
I'd like to keep this moment with me for a long time.
As a remedy for melancholy.
I felt a mixture of quietude, wonder and sadness too, but a sadness that lets itself be approached. A sadness that trembles. A sadness that draws on an infinite source of joy. And all of a sudden, I think: for all these years, I've seen you painting large-format oil paintings, starting from dark backgrounds to bring out the light. And here you are again. And already I feel that everything will blossom again. In spite of everything. Because the seasons must pass and life must prevail. Stronger, always, than the plains and the carnage. Then the tree breaks, transforms into a magical forest, deep, thick, vibrant and hostile too.
Violence takes over. And just as everything is breaking apart inside and out, the buds arrive. The branches are cut off, separated from the trunk, and yet the flowers burst forth.
For me, Les forêts brisées is music. It's a mad gamble on what wavers, what lives, explodes and dazzles, despite the impossibility of living. And the forests turn into mythical animals, spirits and pulsations, and a wind of freedom blows through my heart. The greatest gift I've received in my life, along with music, is to witness the birth of your works in your studio.
Lying quietly on the sofa, you, Gabriel and I have our rituals.
You paint, you draw, with the obstinacy that is yours, and you sing, and I watch what is born in front of me, and I laugh at your apparent lightness when I see you fighting with the wild beasts. The ones lurking inside your chest, waiting for the canvas, the paper, all the supports you offer to allow their birth into the world.
I feel that the red line you've been unfurling for years has entered my body, and the images are turning into waves.
Singing and words then appear.
The desire for an ever-expanding territory.
Clara Ysé
Paris - 2022
