‘About a year ago, having set aside a bowl which had contained some rhubarb grated in water, without wiping it, I was astonished to find, a few days afterward, that the rhubarb had crystallized, covering the bottom of the bowl with perfect cubes, of the color and consistency of glue, and a tenth of an inch in diameter.’

(from Henry David Thoreau’s diaries, 22 December 1837)

The palette is reduced to a minimum. There is only one place where the colour is formed: the bowl. Every day in my studio I head towards it and add a colour to the one left over from the day before.  I never use a pure colour; I always start from what I find inside the bowl. What I find is what is left over from the day before once I have painted on a canvas. Every day I add a new colour, slowly transforming it over time. The substance changes, is consumed and does not accumulate. It is always renewed. The bowl never empties but is always alive and wet. It is like keeping a plant alive. There is only one bowl but there are lots of canvases.

Being in synch with the bowl means listening to it, hearing it speak, being in touch with the nature of things, with a natural and cyclical movement. It means not imposing anything, allowing it to express itself, letting it talk without imposing a course dictated by rational thought. This means acknowledging that the bowl, which is an object and not a human subject, has its interiority and its own personality. It means letting it exist for what it is, letting it express itself with its own language. The colour takes shape organically, against the will of the person touching it or the person directing it through the peculiarity of its language.
Essentially, it is I who comes to think like it more than it comes to think like me. Or rather, its way of talking merges, is in harmony with, coincides with and moves parallel to my deepest feeling and is less based on reason.

(Written in 2015. Modified in 2022)