To Think In Painting is an essay and short film by Anthony Lombardi. The film can be viewed in full by following this link – To Think In Painting
People tend to objectify and reduce the experience of the world to a process of collection and analysis of data. This condition separates the inner self from the outside world creating a distinct relationship between the two. In reality, when I look at nature, I see myself in it as well.
When I paint, I use my hands which are as visible to my eyes as the landscape or a rose that I am painting. My body is both part of the vision which I observe and the maker of the vision which I am creating. My body helps transform the outer world into a painting by being in it. The world. Not separate.
My eyes move and are attracted by things in the world. They create a map of what is visible while painting but simultaneously my eyes create a map of what I am able to paint. So my Being is composed of both what is visible and what I can when it comes to painting. This means that I not only experience a sensorial representation of the world but I am also aware of the immanence of an image that is within me. The body sees and is seen and the mind registers both.
‘Nature is on the inside’ said Cezanne.
There is new relationship between the actual world and the imaginary in a painting. My inner image of a painting is my imagination. This inner image of the painting exists as a trace of the vision from the inside moving out – like clothes for the imagination. At the same time the imaginary is very closely linked to the actual world because it is produced inside my body by visibility – from the outside moving to the inside.
The inner gaze is like a third eye producing the imminence of a vision which is manifested in Painting. When I decide to paint, my eye has been moved inwardly by some impact of the world which is then restored to the visible again through the traces of the hand. Painting.
Painting produces an existence to something invisible which becomes the core of the vision the painting evokes. I interrogate the world with my eyes in order to understand the nature of what it is.
My role is to capture what is making itself seen within myself. I do not see space only according to its exterior, for example a wall or a bridge, but I live the space from the inside as well. I feel what it does to me. I am in the world not just in front of it. Light stimulates the imaginary inside of me. It speaks to me because it is already in me and I am in it.
So painting is not a matter of studying or measuring light and space but of making light and space speak to us.
As Cezanne said, it is to think in painting.
Anthony Lombardi, Rome Art Program
www.anthony-lombardi.com