Dear Vincent,
Like I said in my last letter, I took the liberty of painting a pastiche of "In my room" the one that takes us into your living environment in Arles.
I gave her a watercolor treatment, wanting to remain faithful to your painting style and acknowledge it.
And then suddenly this painting that I love has gripped me and inspired the "Interiors" series.
Actually, your painting touched me so much that I caught myself trying to extend it.
I think that you threw in your anxieties, to provide refuge from the outside world. I seized this occasion to show an inner world and how our private space reflects our lives.
Mirror sets between what we are and the reflection of our interiors, which are outside of ourselves. A certain dialectics... Our moods affect our surroundings, just as the reverse.
They touch us in our secret corners, small crypts of the unconscious well buried behind affective impressions.
Vincent, for me, all this is a dive into intimacy. The painting is a window to another place, a duplication of reality.
This series could be the subject of a lifetime; it raises the question of our choice of the door--- that we sometimes perceive as an obstacle, sometimes as an escape. Door to cross and which to overcome. Protection and confinement.
The key tells us that we are sole masters of our destiny, and that it is sometimes buried in the recesses of our mind.
It’s up to us to find it.
The chair is waiting and eventually replaces the character. Symbol of our lives, it is the constant witness, the actor, the voyeur, the spectator.
Here are a few words that evoke in me that time spent with you.
Know that even if I borrowed this room that was yours, I tried to make it mine...
D.K.