I AM WHO I AM (AND WILL BE WHO I'M NOT YET...)

My name is Jordi Amengual Dolç. And here are some 'brushstrokes' about me:

Brief description of my art vision, inspirations and themes

I think that conceptually and emotionally, my view of art is quite along the lines of what Expressionism is, but not European Expressionism basically or essentially, but mostly American Abstract Expressionism. However, my way of seeing and feeling painting is also related, and very much so!, to 'art brut', informalism and the particular creative spirit of authors such as Joan Miró, Paul Klee, Pablo Picasso or Vassili Kandinsky (we could say in that order).

 

I understand that currently the creative process, as painting has evolved in recent centuries, is subject 'almost' solely to individual intuition. In my opinion, this intuition is directly related to talent, to the innate ability that someone has or can have to transcribe the transformative and universal force of art (transforming individual and/or collective consciousnesses, it is understood) to an original, simple and more or less intelligible language (with the head or with the heart, "with the liver", as Miró would probably say).

 

I do not conceive painting, art, as the simple representation of an image designed to beautify, as a more or less presumptuous or 'impressive' decoration, someone's wall (basically someone with a lot of money), but as a kind of skin under which and on which beats a spirit full of reflection and emotion, in a word, full of humanity. I don't necessarily believe in large deployments of technical means, nor in closed methodologies (this is a matter for artisans), but in the ever-evolving and unprejudiced ability to transmit something useful from an existential point of view to any mind.

 

I feel very comfortable representing nature, or rather the spirit of nature (it is a kind of 'spiritification'), seen in my way, from its simplest or seemingly insignificant elements: insects, several animals, brambles, little hills, etc., all related to my childhood, to our childhood, to what was important then and which is no longer important now or not so much due to the passage of time and the evolution of societies... I am also very interested in the fluctuations that the daily routine causes in the soul, the heaviness of living for the sake of living, the inability to see everything, the only possible option that is allowed to us as a kind of perceiving reality only in fragments, incompletely and very often, too often, absurdly. The line, the rectangle, the circle, the triangle, fundamental elements of cubism or rock art, are, together with color, important elements of my work today.

 

Artists that seem interesting to me at the moment and that come to mind right now: Miquel Barceló, Anselm Kiefer, Jonathan Meese, Georg Baselitz, Gerhard Richter or Jo Hummel... Likewise, I also admire, and very much, Lee Krasner, Kimber Smith, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Jackson Pollock or Joan Mitchell among many others.


Trajectory, exhibitions and 'successes' (inconspicuous, eh?!)

My track record can be disappointing: I stopped painting about 20 years ago now, and about a year ago, I got back into it; why? Very simple:

– I feel that I already know what I want to say and how I want to say it.


- During these last years, I have been thinking about art and the artistic fact, maturing ideas and concepts, working as a journalist, professor of Catalan language at the university and secondary school, and History also in secondary.


– Before I stopped painting, I won different prizes, two in Mallorca and one in Barcelona: in Mallorca with a figurative work, a study of lights and shadows on a still life, and also and secondly, with a rather expressionist work, an oil with shades of green, black, white and grey that the gods know in whose hands it is now; and in Barcelona with an abstract work. This positive feedback has always been with me.


- I think that the fact that I have almost no career is a positive thing, because nobody in the artistic world knows me, everything I do and will do from now on will be something new, something surprising, new, different, strange... (Sometimes I feel, obviously saving the differences, which are not few, like a kind of Bill Traylor, extraordinary artist!)

I don't regret having stopped painting because when I made the decision I felt lost and there was nothing in today's art world that seemed the least bit satisfying to me (I probably felt too young or immature and too alone or isolated).

Goethe says:

"Create, artist, do not speak." And this is what needs to be done.