A dream of red flights
Walking towards the horizon, it always continues as far as the beginning. The poet Cavafy wrote that on the journey to Ithaca one must wish that that journey is long. And Calderon de la Barca that perhaps life is a dream and dreams are just dreams. brigitte Art has made of her blank pages the aircraft with which she flies high, very high, and of the red spirit that overflows from her imagination to a intense hair, the colour of her dreams. She is red, love and passion, and draws with colourful crayons the dreams that the real world wants to deny her. An horizon to which she flies daily stopping at the shelter of human warmth, of emotion and illusion. By the hand of her alter ego in the creative world, bRi, she takes walks late at night, jumping puddles of tears to give birth from each breath of sadness to a new arc of colour.
One of your drawings is titled Fly me to the moon. How is the moon to which you want to fly?
It's a small moon, simple, seemingly inert, those in which in a crater you find a small stem sprouting... A moon where you feel protected, accompanied, in calm... where anything is possible...where you always grab a hand when you fall...
Your world is the one of small things?
Yes, definitely. Everything is made of small things, even the most beautiful and vast: a desert is only thousands of grains of sand, blue sea is the result of millions of droplets of salty water ... The little things that people leave abandoned, forgotten in corners ... They are treasures that wait patiently to be discovered.
The same happiness is small things. I think that's one of the reflections of the world in which we live, I mean the time in which we live ... People are unhappy, frustrated ... seek happiness but they do it wrong: looking a whole, and this is their mistake . Happiness is in brief instants, in a person, in being able to see and recognize that an instant is happy ... The little things change the world.
Your drawings are usually self-portraits in different situations that evoke the relationship between your inner and the outer world.
Well, rather than self-portraits, is my alter-ego. bRi is the part that remains paradoxically more hidden in me. She expresses feelings, thoughts or ramblings that appear when facing the outside world, the real world. It’s a catharsis between dreams and aspirations, and everyday life. Not trying to convince anyone of anything, I just want people to think, or at least I try. Brigitte and bRi are two, but they both belong to each other. I think it is an innate duality of humans that not everyone dares to confront.
And why did you decide to express it through drawing?
Since childhood I had to retreat into my own world, a world that came alive between pencils and blank papers. There's something inside me that having been "aborted" due to the circumstantial at life, needs to get out and scream in silence. I need to create to live. It was always easy to have or find a pen and a blank paper ... so it began ... I did not need much to feel safe, in a room, in the library, in a corner of the schoolyard ... remember the little things, don’t you? That’s it. The line drawing is a narration of my story, and the colours are the force I can count with, the story, the passion, the pain, the joy ... each colour is a feeling ... There was a time when this world of colours was put aside, you know, for a professional status, economic, social ... I did not have time. But after a personal loss in my life and along with it the savagery of the conflict with that new vacuum, drawing, my drawings came back to me, and since eight years they are my priority even if this entails difficulties.
Parfois je me sens invisible. Is that so?
Yes, totally. Sometimes I feel completely invisible ... against the frenetic pace of this world. I guess it's also because in a professional level, people do not imagine most cases the effort and work behind my project. There is a final result that is an illustration, or artwork, and the people receive it and decide if they like it or not, that is what it transmits them. But rarely is valued the time and the love in it. Illustration is a tough world in this sense, because it is not valued as art, and does not fit as "profession" even today. It always makes me grace when sometimes a taxi driver asks me what I do and when I answer "illustrator" he always tell me “what is that? Doing drawings?” But I feel very cuddly trying to explain what I do.
What does it mean for you the red colour?
Red is me. It is my hallmark, the natural colour of my hair, and as a child as a "self-pride". And it’s also a colour always associated with the most passionate feelings or emotions of life ... love is red, because it’s caused by the heart that pumps the blood, which is also red ... and if spilled blood is pain. Do you see the paradox? Love and pain, the two most powerful feelings are red. I am RED. Love and pain. Passion.
Love and passion aren’t the same?
One can love with passion, yes, but passion can be present in many other feelings. Even on the contrary: heartbreak, there’s no passion in hate?
Do you consider yourself a rebel?
Yes and in uppercase. Since I was a child but a rebellion never imposed as an example of overcoming or desire or that another world is possible. I hate the impositions or extremisms. Rebel because I don’t sit in the comfortable or seemingly easy. Rebel because despite the many walls built I want to find the light. I think any act of expression or creation, artists, musicians, writers, all are signs of rebellion. Each book is written.
And if you had to break something, what would it be?
I think nothing that has been created must be broken. Rather I’d break invisible things, as strings and threads that handle or tie people and make them unhappy. I’d break the screams, the wars, the inequalities. And one time or another I am one who has taken a glass or a plate and being alone I has stamped them on the ground to break the tension and angst. Feel great, I recommend you do.
Do you believe in magic?
It exists only if you believe in it, not? I believe in the magic that every human being encloses of what many are not aware. bRI fully believe in magic, because this way she has an infinite world of possibilities in front of her.
On a creative level, how do you see the artistic world today?
We are at an advanced stage in terms of progress, and it is clear that more facilities means people have more capacity of expression, everyone in general. But I think an important screen must be done. I think there has been a substantial loss in the emotional aspect, in the road. The great classical or contemporary painters still are the ones who thrill me, or in terms of photography, I rarely get a snapshot transmit me as much as in times of analogue photography. Perhaps it is simply "my taste", but I think the genius (and there is) goes sometimes unnoticed before the maelstrom of "creativity 2.0" that exists today. Those who belong to a generation like ours, for example, although there is now music that thrills and conquest us, why are we always caught by the classic songs and we return to them? I believe, nevertheless, that there will be a return to craftsmanship, to handmade, the use of "technical", and this will bring a boost in the quality of the creative.
Classic and rebellious at the same time. Does classicism mean to go against the current tide right now?
Classic because I seek quality over quantity perhaps. What I know is that it is very "fashion" to say one goes against the tide. I believe more in acts than in words. Now people call me modern because of my dress and I bought all these second hand dresses which I mend myself a long; because I'm an illustrator and I like photography since over thirty years. I believe in the authenticity, to express and to be who you are, to be true to yourself beyond social or the changes in stereotypes. I believe and fight for the world of illustration for over 20 years when it was unthinkable that art galleries organized thematic exhibitions of illustrators, when it was not "art". When you had to flee to Berlin or France in order your work found a place. The current fads come and go, only the true identity remains. If so, then yes, I'm classical with myself.
Do you dream with flying?
I dream with "returning" to fly.
Where to?
I do not mind so much the destination as the source. Fly leaving behind the darkness, fly towards the light. Fly to be free. Even with invisible wings, or wings in the heart (the literature is full of references). Flying into a smile, to a hug, to the future. The universe is vast and infinite, and is very arrogant believe you are the centre of the universe. I want to fly to learn, understand and know everything I can in this short life.
brigitte Art | LA VIE EST UNE FEUILLE VIDE exhibition here
Work In the tree by brigitte Art
Image courtesy of brigitte Art
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