About the Artist
The paintings of the Ibicencan artist Romanie are a product of the inner work that is developed every time she picks up her brushes. The motifs and repetitive shapes we see are the inheritance of a childhood spent in the countryside in Ibiza in the 1970’s, whilst the embodied themes in the work arise from a constant spiritual search. For Romanie painting works as a medium rather than an end in itself.
The paintings take form whilst the artist establishes an inner dialogue and relates it to that which her hand paints freely upon the blank surface of the canvas or board. The first strokes are traced by chance, emerging from the subconscious, until the first defined forms appear; at this point a relationship begins between ideas, emotions and inner thoughts, turning into recognizable images as a result of the process.
Romanie began exhibiting her work in 2001 and paints practically every day in her house in the countryside of Ibiza.
When traveling she paints in her notepads and gathering ideas and images that appear in later works.
Romanie in 1986
About the Art
Painting for me is a necessity to be able to maintain myself balanced between this world and my inner one. When I start a painting, I normally don´t know where it will take me. I start painting from the subconscious, letting shapes and colours find their space. No judgment. While I do this, I usually listen to music that helps my mind get further away from my inner chatter. It is like a kind of meditation. Thoughts come and go, I can see them coming and I try to not follow them and let them leave. Just observe.
There comes a moment in this process when I stop and look at the painting. I start to ask the painting questions that come to me. This is when I use my notebook and start writing automatically. Questions come to me like, Where do you come from? What are you here to tell me? What does this or that mean? What is the relationship between this or that? Words come to me, questions, sometimes many answers to the same question, etc… This turns naturally into my mind association one thing to the other and linking it all up into some kind of sense. From words to shapes to colours to things that are still not even in the picture and need to be. At this point I get a sense of what the painting gets to look like as an end result.
I still continue to work on this painting. Defining all the things that I found out in my conversation with the painting. This is when I get into painting patterns and textures, this can take forever, I seem to enter, again, a state of meditation, repeating once and again the same shapes. I find it a way to pull myself out of the process and let it happen.
A few times I have had the experience of an idea coming to mind to make a painting from it. The painting never gets done. I start it and get so bored while I´m doing it because I feel restrained by the result that I can´t continue. I don´t know how to paint like that.
Photo © Niki Witoszynskyj