The Written Words of a Ledger Account are Transformed into a New ‘Masterpiece’ for Ruinart

Ruinart, the world's oldest champagne house, has a very special relationship with the world of contemporary art: asides from its role as an official partner of some of the most prestigious art fairs worldwide, the Maison also collaborates with international artists in the creation of new works. An example of one of its collaborations includes its ‘Masterpieces’ series, whereby the champagne house invites artists to create works of art inspired by its history, legacy and exquisite vintages. In fact, this long tradition of artistic collaborations dates as far back as 1895 (other contemporary artists who have participated in the Maison’s ‘Masterpieces’ initiative include Gideon Rubin, Rubén Fuentes and Piet Hein Eek).

For its latest ‘Masterpiece’, Ruinart invited Scottish visual artist Georgia Russell to bring her unique technique and artistic vocabulary and add it to the Maison’s heritage. Russell, who now lives and works in France, has come to be known for her technique of cutting and shaping printed paper, especially books and sourced photographs, by use of a sharp scalpel, in order to create intricate flowing patterns that (at least in the case of the books) appear to flow out of their covers creating rich textures and surreal shapes that spark our imagination.

Russell chose to work on one of Ruinart’s most precious relics, the Grand Livre: the 1729 book containing the Maison’s founding act and early achievements, written by no other than Nicolas Ruinart the founder of the venerable House. Based on a facsimile of the book that was given to Russell, she then went on to painstakingly carve each and every page to create an intricate foliage that gracefully pours out of the book, merging the elegant handwriting with the light. The work also pays tribute to Ruinart’s ancient wine cellars which are comprised of a vast network of tunnels and cathedrals of chalk, all carved patiently and laboriously by hand over many centuries. Patterns on the walls of Ruinart’s cellars provided the inspiration for a delicate ornament for the Maison’s flagship Blanc de Blancs wine, (also designed by Russell which we presented on Yatzer back in April).

As the Official Champagne Partner for Art Basel 2014, Ruinart presented Georgia Russell’s ‘Masterpiece’ together with her ornament for the Maison’s Blanc de Blancs bottle at the Ruinart VIP Lounge.

source : https://www.yatzer.com/written-words-ledger-account-are-transformed-new-‘masterpiece’-ruinart

Luís Athouguia ou De como sonhar sem dormir

Luís Athouguia (1953- ) é um pintor e artista plástico português, em atividade desde 
1983, tendo participado de diversas bienais de arte e exposto em vários museus e 
exposições nacionais e internacionais desde então. Sua linguagem visual assemelha-se 
ao surrealismo. Nas palavras do escritor português Manuel da Silva Ramos, Luís 
Athouguia "é único e inclassificável (não é surrealista nem deixa de ser quando afirma 
a sua reticência!)" [citação e imagem extraídas de http://athouguia.wixsite.com/athouguia]. 
Ao entrarmos no primeiro piso desta retrospectiva, somos envoltos por um universo
multicolor inexplicável. Por entre as algas dos quadros nossa imaginação voa e 
mergulha neles. Em particular neste piso, "Caligrafia Efluente", do ano 2000,
prendeu-me de forma tal que passei bons minutos a observar o contraste de suas cores. 
Voltava a ele de tempos em tempos: como que puxado por um laço, retornava aos seus
traços fluidos. Uma forma da não-forma que dá possibilidade ao observador de participar 
de sua composição.

Caligrafia Efluente (2000).

Já no segundo piso, com obras mais recentes, entre 2003 e 2017, permanecemos 
em meio às cores e somos levados cada vez mais ao mundo dos sonhos.
O pintor prende-se mais a formas, o que, em nenhum momento limita sua arte.
Pelo contrário, Athouguia rompe a barreira entre o abstracionismo e o figurativismo e
utiliza, belamente, elementos reconhecíveis: olhos, rostos, peixes, plantas, insígnias
e discos voadores. Juntos, formam uma poesia visual, dessas que cativam. 

Tal como um marinheiro atraído pelo canto da sereia são os olhos de quem observa 
cada quadro: fixos, vidrados, maníacos até, sedentos por mais, por jogar-se
em suas telas. Suas obras aqui expostas, 95 ao total, são verdadeiros
exemplos de uma arte que não deve favores à realidade.

Pelo contrário, apropria-se desta, criando quadros únicos, oníricos. 

Como bom sonho, não se prende à lógica, brinca com esta. 

Como bom sonho, parece-se com o anterior mas é outro, 
um desvelar de uma nova e real não-realidade.

Firmamentos Revisitados: Retrospectiva de Pintura de Luís Athouguia
Galeria Municipal Artur Bual
De 16/novembro/17 a 7/janeiro/18

Entrada livre, das 10:00 às 18:00 de terça a domingo, incluindo feriados

Contato: gmabual@cm-amadora.pt
A galeria possui acessibilidade para deficientes físicos

Stairways to Escher

The Museum of popular art in Lisbon presents the first exhibition in Portugal dedicated to the fascinating and complex world of Dutch graphic artist, M.C. Escher.

M.C. Escher was an incredibly gifted graphic artist with a distinctive style and a huge imagination. Although he is famous for his geometrical designs and impossible landscapes, he still remains an enigmatic figure.

He never identified himself, or associated, with any artistic movement. Not even with surrealism, which also shared his play with reality and illusion. Escher was a private man, who tended to explore and to work alone, and he always considered himself as a graphic artist rather that an Artist.

The exhibition at the Museum of Popular Art in Lisbon brings together 200 of his original works. It is chronologically organized, spanning from his early works as a student to his final pieces, made in the 1960's.

Escher was born in Leeuwarden in the Netherlands in 1898. He began his studies at the School of Architecture and Design in Haarlem but as soon as his teacher recognized his high skills at printmaking and draughtsmanship he directed him toward a career in the graphic arts. In his early works from the 1920’s, we can already recognize features of his distinctive style. For example, in his woodcut Hand with fir cone (1921), we can notice his attraction for geometrical patterns. The rare woodcut series Pascal’s Flower (1921) captured some of his common themes, such as contrasts and patterns, which also reflect the influence of Asian art. The strange title of the print Whore's Superstition (The Fist) (1921) is one of the most mysterious of Escher's work and refers to the powerful relationship between an artist and his patron.

Hand with fir cone, (1921)

Pascal’s Flower (1921), Whore's Superstition (The Fist) (1921)

In 1921, Escher moved with his family to Italy, where he developed an interest in Italian landscapes. He used the black and white medium of the woodcut and captured the symmetry and the shape of villages to create a brash yet peaceful view in his woodcut Morano-Calabria (1930).

Morano-Calabria (1930).

Escher visited the Alhambra Palace in Spain, in 1936, which was a turning point for him. The Moorish/Islamic features of the palace's mosaics inspired him to create a new visual language. He became deeply engaged with geometric patterning, divided planes and other optical techniques.

In Metamorphosis (1940), each image is morphed into a tessellated pattern and then slowly alters to another pattern until it becomes a new image. The process starts with the word metamorphose in a black rectangle, followed by several smaller metamorphosed rectangles forming a grid pattern. From abstract shapes, it morphs into reptiles, a honeycomb, insects, fish and birds, that fly and swim toward, or away from, each other. For me, it was a dazzling experience to try to see the development of the images, that gradually change to create an imaginative universe.

Metamorphosis (1940).

By the 1940's, Escher went back to the Netherlands and focused on optical illusions and on paradoxical art. His works hypnotize the viewer with images and graphic details that looks real but are actually impossible. In Relativity (1955), the structure he created has seven stairways, each of which can be used by people who belong to different planes. Two figures use the same stairway in the same direction and on the same side, but each of them uses a different face of each step - one descends the stairway as the other climbs it, even while moving in the same direction nearly side by side. In Belvedere (1958), a plausible-looking belvedere is in fact an impossible object, which is modelled after an impossible cube. Circle Limit II (1960) is one of a series of four woodcuts which are based on a special kind of geometry, Hyperbolic Geometry.

Relativity (1955)

Belvedere (1958)

Circle Limit II (1960)

I went to the exhibition with my family, including my two young children. It was a great opportunity to expose them to the kind of art that relates to other worlds such as mathematics and science. The gallery space has been divided into several subspaces, covered with different patterns. These spaces hosted different collections from the artist, interactive installations and videos of tessellations. These interactive projects and games invited us to explore Escher’s world and to experience some scientific principles which he explored and expressed in his work, such as reflection, perspective, rotation, repetition, negative space, and others.

The Relativity Room, for example, causes disorientation and produces seemingly strange compositions and impossible constructions when viewed from different viewpoints.

Another fun example is The Mirror Room, which, like its name suggests, is entirely composed of mirrors orientated in various directions, and also hanging fish. The reflections create the illusion of an infinite number of rooms, fish, and ourselves.

The Gallery

The Gallery

Watching video

An Interactive Installation

Stepping into this cube will make you a part of the image

The Relativity Room

The Mirror Room

The Escher exhibition is a fascinating and fun exhibition of an incredible artist. It allows one to step into his amazingly imaginative world .

At the end of the tour, I was truly wondering why Escher did not define himself as an artist, and if he was more related to the mathematical world, where he was also admired by some great mathematicians. Maybe we can find some answers to that in the essay “The Two Cultures” by C. P. Snow, where the author talks about the great cultural divide between the two great areas of human intellectual activity: Science and Art.

Escher was a practitioner in both areas. He was a gifted draftsman with an endless imagination and outstanding graphic skills. His works are witty and intelligent, possible and impossible, and many of them stand as a bridge over the cultural divide.

Tickets are priced from 9 euros per adult and 3 euros per child aged two, to 12 euros.

The exhibition will run until 27 of May of 2017.

For more information, visit www.escherlisboa.com

O Livro Ilegível e os Pré-livros

As experiências editoriais de Bruno Munari
ou o livro enquanto objecto sensorial

 

“É preciso, enquanto se está a tempo, habituar o indivíduo a pensar, imaginar, a fantasiar, a ser criativo.” - Bruno Munari

Pensar o livro enquanto uma experiência sensorial, arrancando o leitor do seu habitual estado de receptor passivo da mensagem, foi a proposta que Bruno Munari deu início com alguns dos seus projectos editoriais, tanto nos seus trabalhos para adultos - os Livros Ilegíveis, quanto as obras que idealizou para as crianças - os Pré-Livros.
Esta foi a grande revolução que Munari trouxe para o mundo da edição do livro: encarar o livro enquanto veículo capaz de comunicar por outra forma para além do texto.
Bruno Munari foi um designer e artista (ou um artista e designer) italiano, nascido em 1907 na cidade de Milão, tendo falecido, na mesma cidade, em 1998, aos 91 anos de idade. 
O seu contributo foi enorme em diversas áreas do saber, do pensar e do fazer artístico, tanto no campo das artes visuais (pintura, escultura, design e cinema), como também na literatura e na poesia.
Para muitos, o seu trabalho tornou-se uma referência na área editorial, tendo havido quem o considerasse como um dos designers mais inspiradores de todos os tempos - Picasso chega a referir-se a Munari como “o novo Leonardo”.
Ainda que tenha iniciado a sua actividade profissional enquanto designer gráfico no início da década de 30, do século passado, foi só após o fim da segunda guerra mundial que Munari começa a projectar e a produzir inovações radicais na área do design gráfico, da tipografia e da edição de objectos-livro - é nesta fase que surgem os seus primeiros “Livros Ilegíveis”. 
Influenciado pelo nascimento do seu filho Alberto, é também nesta altura que começa a criar os seus primeiros livros infantis que desafiam o conceito tradicional de livro - razão pela qual muitos dos seus projectos foram recusados pelas editoras da época. 
Contudo é somente em 1981 que Munari apresenta formalmente estes conceitos - livro ilegível e o de pré-livro - ao publicar o livro “Das Coisas Nascem Coisas”.

Os Livros Ilegíveis

“Normalmente quando se pensa em livros pensa-se em textos (…) que se imprimem sobre as páginas. Pouco interesse se tem pelo papel, pela encadernação do livro, pela cor da tinta, por todos aqueles elementos com que se realiza o livro como objecto. Pouca importância se dá aos caracteres tipográficos e muito menos aos espaços brancos, às margens, à numeração das páginas, e a tudo o resto. O objectivo desta experimentação foi ver se é possível usar o material com que se faz um livro (excluindo o texto) como linguagem visual. O problema, portanto, é: pode-se comunicar, visual e tacitamente, apenas com os meios editoriais de produção de um livro? Ou: o livro como objecto, independentemente das palavras impressas, pode comunicar alguma coisa? O quê?” - Bruno Munari

Munari projecta a primeira série de livros ilegíveis em 1949, numa proposta que abandona por completo toda a comunicação textual, favorecendo uma função maioritariamente estética, formal, física e sensorial do livro. 
Essa exploração acontece recorrendo às diferentes texturas, espessuras e formatos das páginas. O livro apresenta-se já não num binómio “papel-que-serve-de-suporte-ao-texto”, mas antes como um objecto onde a mensagem passa através do formato, da cor e dos diferentes cortes das páginas, e também pela forma como esses cortes se sucedem. 
Os elementos que tradicionalmente compõem um livro são deixados de parte e a leitura assemelha-se à execução de uma melodia, cujos ritmos de leitura diferentes criam diversos jogos ao longo das páginas.
Os primeiros exemplares destes livros, feitos à mão, foram inicialmente expostos na livraria SALTO, em Milão em 1950. Posteriormente, o MoMa, Nova Iorque, produziu uma edição de mil exemplares aquando da exposição Two Graphic Designers, em 1967.
Munari criou vários destes livros ao longo da sua vida, sendo sempre recorrente a experimentação dos materiais e os jogos visuais. 
O livro na imagem superior, intitulado Libro Illeggibile “MN1”, foi projectado por Munari em 1984. 

Os Pré-livros

“Sabe-se que as pessoas de idade têm uma enorme dificuldade em modificar o seu pensamento, justamente porque aquilo que se aprende nos primeiros anos de vida permanece como regra fixa para sempre e, ter de a mudar, para muitos, é como perder a segurança para aventurar-se numa situação que não se conhece. A solução deste problema, de aumentar o conhecimento e de formar pessoas com mentalidade mais elástica e menos repetitiva, está em nos ocuparmos com os indivíduos enquanto se formam. Nos primeiros anos de vida, enquanto, como ensina Piaget, se forma a inteligência. Sabemos também que nos primeiros anos de vida as crianças conhecem o ambiente que as rodeia por meio de todos os seus receptores sensoriais (…).” - Bruno Munari

Com base neste pressuposto Bruno Munari cria este projecto que é composto por 12 pequenos livros. Cada um deles tem diferentes propostas de exercícios onde Munari convida as crianças a explorarem outras sensações com todos os seus sentidos: o tacto, o olfacto, a audição, para além daquilo que habitualmente é explorado apenas com o estímulo visual - o que ocorria com a maioria dos livros infantis na época.
Os livros foram projectados todos no mesmo tamanho, com o único título “LIVRO”, impresso de forma simétrica independentemente do lado por onde a criança iniciasse a sua leitura. Por essa razão não existia uma história linear, uma narrativa, para que também fosse estimulado o pensamento e raciocínio dos pequenos “leitores”. Desta forma a mensagem era sempre veiculada e o conteúdo não perdia nunca a sua lógica.
Para aumentar o estímulo sensorial Munari recorreu a vários materiais como tecido, cartão, couro, madeira e plástico, assim como diferentes tipos de encadernação.
Foram colocados vários protótipos à disposição das crianças em idade pré-escolar, a fim de se testarem as suas reacções. Com o resultado desses testes de usabilidade, após algumas alterações e ajustamentos, os modelos finais começaram a ser produzidos pela Danese, em Milão, no princípio dos anos 80.
A proposta de Munari, com estes pré-livros, foi no sentido de produzir vários objectos sensoriais que, aumentando a amplitude dos sentidos passíveis de serem explorados pelas crianças, as estimulasse a ter uma abordagem criativa e experimental com o objecto livro e com o processo de leitura. 
Era intenção de Munari que, com esta desconstrução do objecto livro, as crianças criassem uma relação mais positiva com os hábitos de leitura numa fase posterior da sua vida, quando fossem mais velhos, graças a esta forma diferente de experimentação do livro durante a sua infância.

[Nota: Algumas imagens destes 12 livros podem ser consultadas com maior detalhe aqui.]

Nos dias de hoje, passados mais de 80 anos desde as suas primeiras investidas neste campo, o seu trabalho continua, tão actual quanto pertinente, razão pela qual os seus livros ainda se mantêm com uma grande aceitação por parte do público, continuando, a maior parte deles, a ser reeditados. 


Bibliografia

• Munari, Bruno (1982) “Das Coisas Nascem Coisas”, Lisboa, Edições 70
• Brandão, Lucas - "Bruno Munari, um dos principais nomes na teoria e prática do design”. Comunidade Cultura e Arte. [Em linha]. 2017. [Consult. a 10.12.2017]. Disponível em: https://www.comunidadeculturaearte.com/bruno-munari-um-dos-principais-nomes-na-teoria-e-pratica-do-design/
• Ferreira, Carolina - "Munari: livro ilegível e pré-livro”. Medium. [Em linha]. 2017. [Consult. a 10.12.2017]. Disponível em: https://medium.com/@carolinaferreira/munari-livro-ileg%C3%ADvel-e-pr%C3%A9-livro-3c65b53a54e1
• "Bruno Munari”. Wikipedia. [Em linha]. 2017. [Consult. a 10.12.2017]. Disponível em: https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruno_Munari
• Dowling, Jon - "Bruno Munari “. Counter-Print. [Em linha]. 2017. [Consult. a 10.12.2017]. Disponível em: https://www.counter-print.co.uk/blogs/news/bruno-munari
• "Libro illeggibile 'MN 1’". Counter-Print. [Em linha]. 2017. [Consult. a 10.12.2017]. Disponível em:https://www.counter-print.co.uk/products/libro-illeggibile-mn-1

The Carved Book Landscapes of Guy Laramée

The human spirit transcends the known through the work of Guy Laramée the Montreal based artist who pushes the materiality of the common book to the limit. Continuing the lines drawn by Caspar Friedrich and Gerhard Richter, Laramée admits to his attraction to spirituality. He combines the old philosophies of Asian arts and Zen and draws energy from Romanticism. Yatzer caught up with the artist to discover his approaches to his practice and discussed human primitiveness, sand-blasting and artistic freedom...



Do you class yourself as a romantic and if so, in which ways?
As most artists, I try to transcend all identifications. I always refer to these words from Kabir as my motto: ''If you were to free me, free me from myself''. So if I was to accept seeing myself as a 'Romantic', it would only be provisional.  On the other hand however, over the last few years, I have come to question our cult of innovation and sought to reconcile myself with what we call 'tradition' (for lack of a better word). As much as I seek to accept discontinuity, to welcome it, not so much as a modus vivendi- having to break from the past – but rather as a fact, I also want to find what lies behind impermanence. So gradually, I had my ''coming out'' so to speak, and I became less and less reluctant to confess that yes, if I find a link in any current of art history, it is probably Romanticism that best describes my preoccupations as an artist. It is Gerhard Richter who sort of gave me the rubber stamp to accept that as much as we want to find our way, outside history, we also have the task of pursuing the lines of work drawn by our ancestors. Not any line, not all the lines, but those that we feel must be continued.

So in a way my work is about continuing this line that goes From Caspar Friedrich to Gerhard Richter. Of course ''Romanticism'' is in itself a big movement and I don’t claim to defend all of its tenants. Of all the descriptors one finds about this current, it is probably the most understated that attracts me the most: spirituality. The way the Romantics sought to see the transcendent in nature finds echoes in the Asian arts that were linked to Chan’ – the ancestor of Zen. I can identify with that easily. I had what religious literature refers to as ''epiphanies'' while climbing high mountains. I think one reason why this kind of sensibility is now dismissed in contemporary art is simply this: people don’t go there. So if you don’t experience the ''Sublime'' first hand, the next step is to deny its existence.



Themes such as isolation, spirituality and the greatness of nature are ever present. Can you expand on the importance of these themes?
My work is not about nature. It is about the feelings that a wild setting triggers. It is about transcending the mundane. Going beyond both the known and the unknown and heading for the unknowable. I think it is Christianity that had us thinking about the ''transcendent'' as a floating realm, outside this world, a paradise of sorts. Asian spiritualities give a completely different reading of the term. To them the concept of ''transcendence'' means simply beyond, beyond opposites, beyond concepts, concepts of any kind, even the concept of ''concept''. So in a way, I am closer to people like Agnes Martin, who found a way of going beyond the mundane through abstraction. ''Painting is not about ideas or personal emotions'' she said. ''Paintings are about being free from the cares of the world, free from worldliness''.

Talk us through your creative process with one or two examples.
Inspiration is a very mysterious thing. It comes unexpectedly. Of course, having baked some preoccupations for more than thirty years now – questioning the ideologies of progress, being nurtured by non-western cultures, rooting myself in the existential and the meaning of suffering, questioning our fascination for the accumulation of knowledge, etc – it is normal that inspiration would come in the guise of these questionings.  The book is a good example. It came out very casually. Whilst working on a sculpture in a metal shop, I looked over to a sandblaster cabinet that I used occasionally and thought to myself ''what would it be like to put a book in there?'' And there it was. In seconds, the whole thing bloomed. I saw the landscape and the whole line of work actually.  But many discoveries go unattended, for lack of proper ground. I think the reason why I picked up this thread so readily is that at the time, I was doing a master in anthropology. (I was actually doing two master degrees simultaneously - another one in visual arts.) So this discovery – sandblasting books – just gave form to my ambiguous relation to academia and to knowledge in general. For years I had been questioning this need that we have to pile things into our head. Wisdom, I thought, must be the exact opposite: emptying one’s certitudes, instead of building them. Or rather founding another ground to certitude than sheer belief –our so-called sciences, what I call the ''religions of the objective''.





Why books? Would you say that you treat books as traces of civilization?
Yeah, why books… Certainly traces, but not so much of civilizations as traces of how our minds work. I’m looking for an outside to the intellect – as most artists certainly do, most of which is achieved without knowing.  The mind is inescapable. We can’t stop thinking, even if we try to. But we can take a step backward and see it for what it is: a dream within a dream. That itself is liberation. And what do artists seek, if not their freedom?

Is a sculptural intervention on any specific book determined by the book's content?
I am not interested in what lies inside those books. I do not comment on their content. I want to shift our focus from ''what we think'' to ''THAT we think''.  At first I restricted myself only to encyclopaedias and dictionaries. It was easier in a way as there are so many books! I was attracted to encyclopaedias because of their alleged neutrality. Encyclopaedias were also becoming the locus of obsolescence. I could find them for $0.25 a book and that was because they were no longer valid, both in their content as well as being a vehicle for knowledge.  But one day I was walking through the aisles of a library and I found one book, the only book in years that drew my attention not because of its title. You know, when you look at books, what do you look at? The title, the author, in brief: the function. But this book was just…beautiful! The colour of the cover, the nickel tone of it embossed title, everything was perfect. I stole it! Of course I found a replacement copy – which cost me $250… but anyway, this became my fetish. I then walked into libraries and bookstores, not looking at content, but looking at form. I had found another way, a more ''clever'' way, to deny content.

So now I go by gut feeling. The book throws a feeling, not even an image at me, and then the image comes, most often all of a sudden. And most of the times, I find afterwards that that image is a perfect response to one of my life’s dilemmas. Last week, one of my books that was badly shelved had become misshapen somewhat. My first reaction was to put it under other books to press it, so that it would recover its “correct” shape. Then all of a sudden this image of a wave, a tsunami came to me, and there it was: the best vehicle to convey all the emotions that the last tsunami in Japan had triggered in me.







Do you use new technological processes? If so how do you reason their use when dealing with such a romantic concept?
No laser, no computer, just plain standard manual electric tools that wood carvers use. From band saw to chain saw to grinder to flexible shaft rotary tools – all very standard procedure for any sculptor.  You see, I don’t abide by any moral prescriptions. I don’t see Romanticism as forbidding as much as allowing. It allows one to trust one’s own feelings, one’s intuitions – whatever that means, one’s own relations to perceptions and yes, sometimes, concepts.

How is human primitiveness discussed through your work?
I think humans have not evolved much since cavemen. And that is good news. The Zen master Robert Aitken said in substance that it is though the old that we touch the timeless, that which is beyond the old and new.  Of course that being said, our consciousness has evolved. We are far more conceptual than our ancestors. They were centred on the Idol and the temple whereas we are centred on the 'I'. My work questions this centre, the 'I' through a simple and very old device: contemplation. Again this word has suffered the necessity of language. It is common to hear people say that they are 'contemplating something'. But if you abide to the original meaning of the word, that is impossible. You cannot contemplate something because contemplation is precisely about abolishing the distance between the viewer and the view.  The magic of the small worlds and the misty landscape in my painting all call for a different relation to the world. They are an invitation to enter and lose oneself in the spectacle.

Is there any reason why the human figure is absent in your work?
It is not absent, not even for a second! YOU are always there. YOU are always in the picture!














source: https://www.yatzer.com/carved-book-landscapes-Guy-Laramee