Creatures 2
“This work is part of ‘Creatures 2’, a project that I realised between 2013 and 2014.
It’s the results of a set of images shot through the years in different parts of the world, some of which capable of moving me so deeply to feel pushed to portrait them on canvas.
These are people the “inhabit” the street and that often, to our hurried look respond with theirs, full of meaning.
The Indian beggar, the old Guatemalan, the little girl of Honduras, the child of Yunnan and others..
I painted all these individuals on big canvas as if art could give them the consideration denied by fate.”
Susanna De Angelis Gardel
Creatures
2012 Skira Editore, Milano
“Why animals?
The answer is simple: because they are what I would like to be but have “yet” to be.
Even if they are unaware, they live in the present moment, the Now.
They are sensory Presence, very often unconditional love and loyalty, beauty and elegance always, even when they die.
It seems that they “happen”, like a sunset, sunrise, or a thunderstorm happens.
The “net work” among them is very powerful: like in a web, the action of one affects the actions of others for miles.
I decided to call them “Creatures” because unfortunately people sometimes give a negative connotation to the word “animal”.
I like to represent them in the most realistic way possible without adding or taking away anything of their beauty, their elegance, thus without “interpreting” them. I chose to remove them from their natural context and for this reason my backgrounds include all the precious things that I think they deserve: luminous silver, absolute white of untreated canvas, and “silky” black of glossy-opaque brushstrokes.
Absolute colours for Absolute Beauty.
The quality of the canvas and stretcher also has to be impeccable to receive them.
Whatever Creature it is, from the most majestic to the most “insignificant”, I feel I am in communion with it.
I remember, during my most recent trip to Africa, the enormous swarm of flying termites that enveloped us as they migrated from their mounds after a violent rainstorm. My astonishment that nature could also be manifested in this way was mixed with a gutwrenching anguish that I could not avoid stepping on these creatures that covered me a thousand strong.
We struggle to realise that the entire journey of our life consists in the step we are taking right now; for them, every step is primary, and the destination, secondary, is instinctive.”
Susanna De Angelis Gardel