Olivier Gilet- Art and Meaning

'Healing Song' Archival Ink Jet Print on Canvas, acylic, etc.
2 meters x 3 meters (approximately 6'7"x 9'11")
This image will be featured in an important exhibit
'MacParis' in Paris, France.
(http://www.mac2000-art.com/macparis/?lang=en)
(Mac is Manifestation d'art Contemporain/
Contemporary Art Event)

'What is the meaning of doing art for you?'

SOME VERY CANDID OPINIONS  ON THE MEANING
OF DOING  ART

1) Doing art is like cleaning. Before cleaning I am
looking carefully, as some dust should be permitted
to stay.

2) Looking (perceiving) is very important. Usually
I am using my eyes, sometimes through a lens. It
creates some distance, and thus some space.

3) Doing art is creating space. Dogs are creating
space and frontiers by urinating, birds are singing,
artists are spreading some art forms in a dangerous
world.

4) I am hungry of beauty, but still cannot define it
fully. That's why I am looking further.

5) While doing art, I am communicating with other
cultures & other times. I am a kind of gardener, &
there are a lot of different plants & flowers.

6) While creating art, I try not to fly away, I try
to be there.

7) Being there.

8) I have some cameras, a computer & a printer & several
big Chinese brushes. Those are my friends & my toys in
this game.

9) I am obsessed by the strange relationships between
the beings & their bodies. So I am using bodies in my
pictures. Spiritual beings are not easy to paint or
photography.

10) Being there and elsewhere.

11) My best moments in the studio: like a child in nature.
Eating light & colors.

12) What's the most dangerous: to be naked in the studio,
or outside?

13) The studio I am dreaming of: Horseshoe Canyon in
Arizona.

14) There is some ecstatic feeling connected with creation.
But doing art is also a job. The archetypal job.

15) Doing art, yes, is a cleaning job. I love the idea of
cleaning the world with forms & colors...& my brushes are
not big enough...

16) I cannot work in the studio without thinking to all
the other beings being there somewhere & creating &
communicating & trying all together to clean the
world...while letting some dust on the shelves, too...

17) Doing art on a continuous basis is like continuously
coming back to a lost paradise, a native universe.

18) That's it, it's how I feel, in a naked world, without
mask.
Olivier Gilet, Brussels Belgium

Olivier's links:
http://www.flicker.com/photos/ogilet/
http://users.skynet.be/o.gilet/tableaux