I finished the painting ‘Au Suivant’ not long ago. It is one of those canvasses that went through a long process before it was done. It belongs in the ‘series’ of ‘Le Sacre du Printemps’, ‘Ecstasy or the Puppeteer’, ‘Shhh’, ‘Setting Sun’ and others.

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I took a canvas called ‘Fist’, that if I remember well I finished in the early nineties. No use being sentimental, I never sold it, looked at it long enough to get bored, so why not use the canvas for a new painting?

The idea for the 'new' canvas was given by the visit with Gala to see the mummy of Cleopatra in the British Museum.

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See below:

Painting finished! I put it on the site and some people loved it. I asked for a title and thank Tove Seeland for having given me the beautiful: ‘All the things we forgot to say to each other’.

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But… something irritated me. I had the feeling that I left it halfway. It was not tight enough and it looked too much like a caricature, a loose statement. It stayed locked away for a couple of months and then I went back to it.

First I changed the laying figure. The space she was laying in was still something of an aquarium, but became darker. And the big head started to breath.

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This way of painting is trial and error. I put a second figure underneath and took away the big head on top (1 in image underneath). The big head had stayed there because I liked it, but never really made sense to me. The breathing did not convince me either. The two figures at the bottom were making a fire. Fire is always good to put in a painting. It is violent and it is light. It made more sense to me...

But then the whole bottom went on fire (2 in image underneath).

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The seated figure on the bottom left stood up and the figure on the bottom right disappeared (3 in image above) and reappeared mounting the laying figure…

Things were starting to fall on their places. I love to play with shadows and the tension they can give (4 and 5).

I gave up the idea of a bright painting and in my over enthusiasm was left with a solid but too monochrome canvas (6: thinking about Mies’ credo: ‘less is more’).

I left it alone for a week and then gave it the last and decicive kick.

Here it is: 'AU SUIVANT'!

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The name I stole from the chanson of Jacques Brel. I do not like to explain the meaning of the painting, just read the text of the video…

(This also because a painting 'happens to me' if all goes well, so I do not like to then direct it somewhere I want. I don't give a moral, I show).