I am a believer and a conformist. Anyone can revolt; it is much more difficult to obey our inner promptings.
–Georges Rouault
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I’ve been a big fan of French painter/printmaker Georges Rouault (1871-1958) from the moment many years ago when I stumbled across Miserere, a book of of his deeply expressionistic etchings. The title translates as Mercy and it contained raw and expressive work that dealt with deeply personal and religious themes along with those inner promptings, as he calls them in the quote above. It was a work that was very influential on my early Exiles series.
His entrance into the world of art was serving, at the age of fourteen, as an apprentice glass painter and restorer which shows itself in his mature work which resembles leaded glass windows with its dark dividing lines and glowing colors that feel sometimes as though they are lit from behind with the light shining through. Both are qualities that excited me and made me want to emulate in my own work. Not to mention the purity a of the emotional feeling throughout.
Now, if only I can obey my own inner promptings…
This is kind of a replay of a blog entry from a couple of years back. I changed some of the wording and added a video that better shows the work of Rouault. Here is that video with more of his work:
Redtree Times 