> AUTHOR
May Herman
· Clinic Psycology. Graduate in Arts.
· Based in Málaga.
Belong to the colectives:
Observatorio Cultural Feminista «O.C.F»
y Mujeres en las Artes Visuales «M.A.V»
"Faced with a blank canvas, in my opinión, the task of painting is complicated, despite supposedly the fluid nature of the act of creating. Even more complicated turns out to be the taskof expressing in words this process. I will try.
In the absence of well-defined ideas, art creation, does not seem an inconvenience to me but rather the opposite. It favors a certain balance between emotions, desires and thoughts in the face of the challenge that a virgin canvas, without a doubt, generate.
My purpose is to deform or re-interpret reality to dilute what is stored, the records of other people's memories, resorting to an ambiguous, diffuse, nebulous artistic discourse ... in which ideas blurred as much as possible, allowing the canvas to surprise me, and also to transform my professional experience with psychopathology, in a fading of other people's memories that no longer require any closeness or proximity, for which I resort to a vehicle of subtle expression in attempt to sharp-blurred using glazes."
A SUBTLE SPIRIT
In a celebrated passage of his Pensées (Thoughts),Blaise Pascal differentiates between the spirit of geometry and the spirit of subtleness, stating that “For it is to judgment that perception belongs, as science belongs to intellect. Intuition is the part of judgment, mathematics of intellect”.
That distinction of Pascal which, for some, establishes the modern foundation of emotional intelligence, does not divide the human spirit into two categories because it often and most frequently happens that the geometric and the subtle side coexist in the same person. But it is not uncommon for one to prime on the other standing out with force and determination of character.
The latter is what is distilled, like drops of resin of her creativity, from May Herman’s art. Subtlety is, artistically speaking, delicacy, elegance, finenessfinesse (finesse is the term used by Pascal). All these meanings agree with the work of our artist.
Andamiajes
Neither Umberto Eco nor Wladyslaw Tatarkiewicz were far from the truth in their conception of artistic Works. For the former the “work of art exists only at the moment it is interpreted, when the multiple meanings it has for each spectator actually crystallize”. For the latter, “beauty is not a quality of the object, nor is it a reaction on the part of the subject. It is the relation between the object and the subject”. I would like to borrow their idea. Beauty is not something which is simply there; it is something which arises, which occurs.
No type of beauty can be identified as a value in itself; beauty is a spark, an electric arc which flashes between the observer and the object. Art comes into existence when, and only when, it arises. This means that art, and beauty, is a two-way-street, between the artist and his work and the spectator.
For this spark to jump when you are in front of one of May Herman’s paintings, you only need a moment’s peace, if possible, in silence and solitude, because what was born as a primal scream, the artist returns to the spectator as a pondered whisper of constrained, disguised but nevertheless profound passion.