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Berabus -- Acrylic Paint
Gatineau, QC
Email: berabuse@hotmail.com |
These pieces were done primarily with acrylic paint, with a few incorporating mixed media. All are on a paper support with a basic size of 18 x 24 inches. I find inspiration in religions, and the social understanding that arises from them. Religions of antiquity have created some fantastic styles and works of art.
For instance, the Egyptians based everything in life on their religion and trusted that this life was a gateway into another life, their king being God incarnate. Their language of hieroglyphs was created to spread word of their worship and to decorate their lives thoroughly with worshipful thoughts and images. This type of dedication fascinates me.
As does the dedication of monastic monks who illuminated their bibles, or the Celts who wove fierce, knotted creatures all over their swords and crosses, incorporating their warlike natures into their worship. Or African natives who created reliquary statues, a kind of mask on a spear which stood guard over the ancestral coffin grounds, warding off man and bad spirits alike. Or the temples built by the Aztecs, which they covered with the countenances of their fierce gods.
Or the fantastic feathered costumes worn by the same Aztecs, and other North American Native peoples for their ceremonial dances and Powwows. Or the false faces created by American Aboriginal peoples, carved from a knot in a living tree and when the sculpture is finally completed and shorn from the tree, the tree lives on and is in no way affected by this creative process. And by God himself and the wondrous works, he has created for us here on earth, in our garden playhouse.
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 False Faces Enmeshed
In The Web of Life.
Carlos Castendes' book "Journey to Ixtland" is the inspiration for this painting. False faces are masks created by American Aboriginal peoples. They are carved from a knot or burl in a living tree. When the sculpture is completed and shorn from the tree, the tree lives on and is in no way affected by this creative process.
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 Desert Nights
I needed to give my false faces a home so I painted this piece. This piece is actually the mate to Piece #1 and displayed to the left of it, they create a Dyptich. I tried to convey the heat rising out of the desert earth at night and the granular feeling of this piece echoes the web in Piece 1. |
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 Glue Web
Continuing on the web theme, I wanted to bring the web into reality, draw it from it's transcendatory
non-existence onto an architectural plane, so that I could see how it would attach itself to matter and be responsible for holding the universe together. |
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 Star Streams
This painting is a depiction of Transcendental Meditation. Here I am
traveling my own web as it takes me anywhere in the universe and anywhere in time. In dreams I have seen the solution to the question of why but when I awake the dream eludes me. My goal now is to remember my dreams and travel the
star streams as often as possible. |
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 Gardens
Trying to move out of the painstaking and time burdened mode I
was into with the Web theme, I painted this as an exploration to
a new direction. But I realize this is my view as I am traveling
my web, as I reach my star stream. Again this is an exploration
of traveling my meditation stream as it unfolds before from the unconscious
to my consciousness.
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 Eruption
I found my new direction quite interesting and was now interested in sculpting the paint. But again as I look it, I understand that it is my knowledge of the rhythm of the web as it envelopes itself around the planet. |
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 Aerial
I created a number of techniques for putting finishes on poured and sculpted Latex paint, burnishing the paint with glazes. But again it is travel of the web, I look down at the planet as I travel the
star stream at low altitudes constantly seeking to understand why.
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 Sunset City
I next became fascinated with raking Acrylic paint with a comb like device I fashioned from cardboard. In my city there is a golden mirrored building that can be seen as you come in off the highway. It reflects everything around itself, the water, sky, other buildings, at sunset. I tried to depict this sun blind feeling with this piece. |
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 Surf Music
This painting is an amalgamation of all the new techniques I had devised. The painting is actually very thick and should be housed in shadow box.
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 Mountain
At first, I was going to put techniques into these triangle swatches. But I rethought this idea, aware that this was a mountain of labour and that I had subconsciously painted a mountain. I wanted to move toward something simpler, more graphic. I like the regata sailboat feel of this piece. I like the tension that the two largest upside down blue triangles in the very center of the work create. So I left it as it was. |
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 PowWow
One weekend I went to both a punk bar and a powwow. I was stunned by the similarities between the dance and costume of these two groups, and still in the 'Journey to Ixtlan' mindset decided to contrast both in one painting. The elaborate costumes I saw at the powwow, I had photographed. Using my photographs, I knew that the outlines would be enough to show the tribal similarities between punk dancers and native dancers.
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 Punk Dance
Punk bars are amazing with flashing lights, mirror balls, strob lights etc., very other worldly. I made another painting to try to depict the true feeling of the punk bar. |
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 Stairway to
the Heavens
This started off as a drawing which I scanned. Using brush
patterns in Adobe Photoshop, which I created from scans of
Kustav Klimpt's works, I painted it in the computer. I am
becoming too comfortable with the computer. It is so much easier
to just move my wrist and imagine that this is a 36 by 48
painting. I am becoming a mouse potato, as you will see in the
next few pages. I have learned how to work my ideas in the
computer, much to the detriment of having to physically interact
with my work. Now a machine does my work for me. Does that mean
that I now have been limited by the medium of computer. Would
this work not be grand as a living entity that I had put hours,
days and weeks of labour into? Would I do it. I have already
seen it in its perfection, here on this page. Why bother.
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 Glowing Jesus
The original work is ink and coloured pencil. This is actually two pieces which I made into one so that I could see if I would like to finish the work this way. |
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 Sunflower
We grew a ton of sunflowers one summer, four different
varieties, so I painted this. One sunflower was twelve feet tall
and it's seed head was bigger than a human person's head. We fed
them and fed them, to see the magnificence of their potential. I
decided that I now knew what it was like to be microscopic, that
these were probably the little meadow flowers that dinosaurs
used to trample in their quest for prey. The sunflowers made me
feel very connected to the ancient past of planet Earth. I found
peace in their immenseness.
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Copyright Berabus © 2007
All rights reserved.
Revised: July 02, 2007
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Berabus