Jean Baptiste Itah
Fire at Sea, 2023
Oil on canvas
17 x 21.50 x 1 in
$975
Painting is above all a work of research on light and color, it is a permanent quest, the desire to transmit the sensitivity of the natural world.
In the same way as Turner, Corot or Boudin, this painting is not so much a simple purely figurative representation of reality but the translation of an instant through a particular moment. Thus this work seeks to transcribe from the sketch a touch of speed. It is an impression of luminous sensation that passes through the palette. The fragile and ephemeral elements of the subject carry within them a form of dream, a memory of a feeling that is expressed on the border between figuration and abstraction.
Following Odilon Redon's reflection on painting, he defines the future of his art in a dimension superior to nature. Not to return it to abstraction or non-figuration but to let it flourish in the dream.
Indeed, if painting, according to nature, makes it possible to render the perceptible beauty of a landscape, it is limited to the finite, limited space of matter and only repeats itself. The dream makes it possible to awaken a sensitive world, drawing its inspiration from the infinite odyssey of the mind. Thought allows artistic creation to free itself from the physical constraint of matter. It is an abstract, unconscious interpretation of the world through dreams in order to imagine and fantasize it. It is a question of dematerializing thought in order to give it back its freedom. Art then becomes a manifestation of the spirit, it represents our awareness of the world through the feelings of the soul.