Luoghi ed ore per l’ispirazione

http://www.youtube.com/user/maxloy1950#p/a/u/1/kFS9GgEHgu8

Il sole del pomeriggio illumina il mare con una luce meno allegra.

La mattina la luce è giovane, azzurra, poi lentamente si sbianca e ingiallisce come la carta dei libri vecchi. La superficie fa specchio al cielo e non lascia più trasparire il fondo, l’acqua sembra più densa ed opaca.

Solo il riverbero non perde il suo fascino, ma la luce non si espande in galassie luminose, diventa sempre più concentrata fino a formare una strada incandescente, accecante, che fa chiudere gli occhi e seguirla è come sognare.

La superficie del mare è luce, sotto è buio, la luce radente non giunge nel fondo.

Io cammino sull’acqua leggero, come Pietro incontro al Signore e non distolgo lo sguardo dal sole, non sia mai dovessi affondare.

In ogni barbaglio di luce scorgo un’anima: tutta la moltitudine immensa dei santi mi precede in lunga colonna per l’invito a nozze nei palazzi del sole, e mi tiene grande compagnia.

Remo in silenzio, cantando segretamente.

È ora di tornare

È cessata del tutto la brezza ed il mare sta diventando sempre più fermo.

Otto di sera, vivo la suggestione di quest’ora la luce addensata in scia luminosa è strada di ritorno, mette fretta, il sole cala, presto scenderà l’ombra notturna e il mare mostrerà la parte oscura, il buio salirà dal fondo e attirerà nel fondo.

Guardo la prua scivolare su un’acqua immota, di seta, che lambisce con impercettibile sciabordio i fianchi della tavola.

Entro nella baia di Costa dei fiori, supero il banco di scogli che riparano la spiaggetta e lascio sfilare la canoa d’abbrivio fino ad arenarsi nella sabbia.

Il sole è tramontato, in quell’istante subito si alza un alito di vento, quasi l’esalazione di un respiro.

È scesa l’ombra, ha spento i colori cancellando l’allegria dal mondo.

Intonato, in quest’ora, suona per me il concerto d’Aranqez.

Il paradiso dei pittori

http://www.youtube.com/user/maxloy1950#p/a/u/0/0oQZu3apFzk

…Ancora mare, non mi sazio.

Quando vedo quella bellissima luce moltiplicata da milioni di stelle danzanti sull’acqua, subito vengo rapito da un’estasi che trascende ogni altro pensiero, nella mente faccio silenzio e nell’anima scende la pace.

Mi figuro come d’essere giunto alle soglie del paradiso e di dover fare solo gli ultimi pochi chilometri per entrare nell’eternità beata e allora do forza alla voga e cadenzo il ritmo, tengo il tempo, destra e sinistra, uno-due, con entusiasmo, con allegria e filo dritto senza voltarmi indietro e il mio presente è acqua, cielo e luce.

Quando ho raggiunto il punto di non ritorno “dall’uomo vecchio” mi sdraio e sto lì quieto, ad occhi socchiusi, e aspetto sereno.

Verrà il giorno in cui saprò trovare la formula di questa astratta felicità, la sua esatta metafora come corpo incarnato, e allora dipingerò bellissimi quadri illuminati, profumati, pieni di estate.

In quel giorno farò il mio ingresso nel paradiso dei pittori.

Sculptures and furniture

http://www.youtube.com/user/maxloy1950#p/u/3/Wx-rvA3csLU

God pulled the man from the mud…I was thinking about it when I saw my first creature taking shape.

I would have liked to inspire it with a soul.

I have longed for it, as at the beginning of the world.

english version: Alessandra Gaggini

Portraits

http://www.youtube.com/user/maxloy1950#p/u/4/zuyUw0PPbUE

The one who asks for a portrait expect something from me, resemblance, of course…but, maybe also a consoling caress, the revelation of a secret, mysterious, beautiful identity… .

Burdened with this responsibility, I have looked for God’s merciful eyes within myself and I have…voiced, I have freed the beauty hidden among the wrinkles of life…on other occasions I have painted prophecies, as not even God is pleased with the present.

english version: Alessandra Gaggini

Sui generis- research routes

http://www.youtube.com/user/maxloy1950#p/u/1/dtjufImod5s

“Sui generis” is the title I have given to this collection and it seems suitable. There are some paintings which are really strange. I don’t know what to think of them and where to put them…are they figurative? Are they abstract? Are they beautiful? Are they ugly? How can I define them?

And, as it is difficult to establish a border line among the countless nuances following which I pass from one language to another, from what is interesting to what is uninteresting, from the original to the predictable, from what is good to what is bad…I think I will postpone my opinion on them, as it is written in the sacred books, in that well known parable of the sower about God’s endless patience.

I must admit that these paintings sometimes embarrass me and I pretend not to know them as if they where illegitimate children to feel ashamed of. However, very often, I owe them the opening of new sceneries.

They witness my various different interests…and also my uncertainty which often turns into doubt and second-thoughts. I find them set with unquestionable anarchy in the planned route of my human and artistic life, like the bricks of a framework I am building. A good structure, though, square and essential, with the brickwork in full view to escape the monotony of the squared stones with some clay tiles in various size and colour, just like my days.

I find here truth and coherence and to sum up I see there is also some beauty together with the revealed meaning. That particular, imperfect and irregular beauty I can find in the life which always goes round itself, hinged on its supporting axis, into the orbit of its sun.

english version: Alessandra Gaggini

Public relations

http://www.youtube.com/user/maxloy1950#p/u/2/GxPYZeRsSpI

And here is my coat of arms, my role in society, my public relations to show as a proof to the world: I know this chap and he knows me… the mutual aid bank.

Within the ten minutes given by YouTube I let the images run through. They portray me here and there, wandering through one hundred cities, hidden in the crowd shaking hands with me and asking for my autograph as if I were a star, and I change my way of being and I joke trying to figure a new image, the most suitable to the agreed role and I smile kindly and witty.

I could manage it, without any problem, overcoming my innate shyness and all the fears of being put on display: I obeyed my duties conscientiously and, just in case, I could also wear my tie and make praiseworthy speeches.

Sometimes, however, while speaking, I gazed in contemplation, losing the thread of my thoughts because an emotion, a dream, something vague caught my imagination all of a sudden.

Then, I started observing the audience, waiting for the predictable outcome of every conference and from that moment on, I began extemporizing, following a special unique inspiration, and I entered the smooth manifest wall, carrying everybody away to no man’s land.

However, as time went by, I felt more and more tired of spreading around words which could be hardly heard in this noisy world which proceeds at the wrong speed, which can’t enjoy and appreciate all the things it swallows up, because it’s always busy doing something else.

And so it happened that, one day I woke up in a bad mood and took the secret decision of fading out from the stage. To my works, by then “grown up” I left the burden of being silent witnesses to my passage: “I owe you one!”.

Therefore, it’s some time now that I gave up holding conventional exhibitions, offering aperitives.

I have also stopped giving speeches.

I have even dropped the habit of sharing my profits with art galleries.

I work in the silent peace of my studio and when the good weather comes I move to Sardinia and, for four months, I settle in paradise where I have everything I need, starting from the most important thing: the light…and the sea.

I’m a guest in a hotel, because I’m friendly, I think.

There is also another version of the story:

It was God.

I have always complained all my life about being unable to travel all over the world, losing that important experience of getting in touch with other cultures and ways of life, not to mention the other opportunities closely related to it. Therefore, in due time, God put me here, at the centre of the world, under a palm, as He knows I like palms, He gave me a paintbrush again, as I think He doesn’t expect anything else from me, or probably to put me at ease, I don’t know, after all, this kindness, He told me plainly:

- Now stay there quiet and don’t bother me, mind your own fucking business, I’ll care about all the rest.-

Then He said to the world:

- Turn around this man, as I have got a plan for him.-

I have to notice that I can’t get on with the world very well and neither the world nor me can understand the reason of this enterprise of God’s, but, you know, everyone deserves his/her own God.

As for me, if I think of my experience as a painter, I know that whenever I can’t see the centre of the picture and find the links I’m looking for, I try at first to stand three, five, ten steps back, according to the difficulty I face in coming to the true and lighted highlights. If, even after that, I can’t work it out, maybe because I’m tired, or because it isn’t easy to solve a problem, then I do a very simple thing: I put my director’s chair in the right place, just like God has done with me, then I sit down, take my time and I keep on watching what I have done without wondering, being firmly persuaded that there must be a meaning and that I’ll understand it sooner or later.

english version: Alessandra Gaggini

My house and my study room

http://www.youtube.com/user/maxloy1950#p/u/5/NtP7kyHSXBs

The light and the shade coming through the windows I didn’t make myself, but I found they decorate our house. Following them everything has been established: the ways, the use and the layout of the rooms.

There’s shadow to rest and light to work. From the ancient, sever, protective and medieval shade, through a twisting flight of stairs we get to the light of heaven and the consoling sun. So there’s a place for every hour, state of mood and feeling where each of us goes to feel at ease.

In our house, my wife and I have been collecting the signs and evidence of a presence which is filling our space and time for years now.

Our friends look at us puzzled when they realize there’s a mysterious spell surrounding us.

Then I don’t deny our house is inhabited.

english version: Alessandra Gaggini

Inseguendo il raggio verde - parte seconda - english

http://www.youtube.com/user/maxloy1950#p/u/16/RNhL-lYHIgM

Following the green gleam.

Part two.

I often finish my paintings with a thin line in the middle as a horizon: a fine light blue line.

It’s all the sea I feel.

The sea as an existential event, as fluidity, as becoming; the horizon as a messianic, never ending wait.

Scanning the horizon is a necessity and a commandment: “stay awake” so it is written.

My wait in front of the sea is serene, reassuring: what harm can come from light blue? And light blue is the dominant colour in my paintings now.

I have been waiting long even for the grace of using this colour, I have been desiring it since half way along my life’s path, even before I was able to do it and from the horizon my state of grace has reached me with the tide, at the turning of the new century, when I was over 50.

Time has diluted the reddish colours on my palette, it has brightened the shady areas and lightened the ancient patinas, which were corroded and oxidized.

The thickness at night, the twist of passions, the faintness of feelings are now left behind in the past century.

There are lots of colours in these latest works, my palette is now enriched because I have gained the right “to plunder” at my age.

Before that, however, I have carefully improved my style, as I firmly believe that the great freedom of the abstract expression needs the experience and the skill of a well tested guidance. What comes out naturally is, actually, the bad instinct of one’s free will, which is both a crime and a fault.

I was wondering how marvellous it is giving way to sleep: it’s an incredible resource!

I try it again and again, when I’m at my easel, in front of a painting to be organized, I look for that particular state of mood where the free associations of thoughts take place, that sort of “clairvoyance” of sleepwalkers which makes it possible to have those mysterious balances.

Intelligence flounders in search of an impossible identification in reality. No way! It won’t get it! I created these paintings as I was daydreaming, so that nobody can shut them in. They are as slippery as an eel, they are the shifting horizon, the dreampowder, the mirage of Itaca refracted in the air, the ghosts of what is elsewhere.

I’ve been told nobody can say the name of God as he goes beyond everything…well…I mean something like that:” How wonderful! But…what is it? …Who knows?”

Simple and pure feeling from the soul.

It is wisdom my dynamic unfinished search for the elsewhere. I love this gentleness in the tones, the breeziness of the space, the orange and yellow warmth, the violet wisteria smell, the light blue peace, the way they keep on fixing and vanishing while the colours are changing. I love this thick surface, cracked as dry land, pure colour under the guise of feeling.

I look inside, through the colours and a window opens up, as a passage towards the stars: I find myself out on the elsewhere.

The paradise of painters.

…The sea again, but I’m not satisfied.

Whenever I see that wonderful light and all the stars dancing on the water, I am at once spellbound by an ecstasy which goes beyond any other thought; I keep silent in my mind and peace fills my soul. I imagine myself on the threshold of heaven, only a few steps far from the blessed eternity.Then I let my enthusiasm grow and I patter my rhythm, I stay in time, right and left, one two, with enthusiasm, with joy and I run, never turning back: the present for me being the water, the sky, the light.

When I reach the point of no return from the “old man” I lie down and stay quiet, my eyes closed, and I wait serene.

The day will come when I can find the way to this abstract happiness, its metaphor as body made flesh, and then I will paint beautiful paintings: bright, scented, full of summer.

On that day I will enter the “paradise of painters”.

english version: Alessandra Gaggini

Inseguendo il raggio verde - prima parte - inglese

http://www.youtube.com/user/maxloy1950#p/u/17/6Frtwq194Ww

Following the green gleam.

Part one.

The green ray is a light you can only see for short periods in the clear summer evenings, just after sunset.
Figuratively, it is something more meaningful, it is an inner light to be looked for where it dwells: in the silence.
I live in a dreaming reality, where my spirit is free from the confines of my body and can merge to become the very things it loves.
In the desert paths of this ghost village I come across sheltered views and corners of far away places in my memory and I feel myself at home again, treading again the sand of Ostia like when I was 18.
There, looking at the sea from behind a gate rusted with salt and sitting on a beached wooden rowboat thrown close to a wild hedge, I drop anchor in Itaca harbour.
I was just a boy when I used to go and see the sunset over the sea.
I reached the very end of a wharf and, overlooking the sea from the rail, of a boat balustrade, I remained in contemplation and imagined to set sail after that mirage of light.
I used to have some bread with me, I still remember its taste…around me water, the look in the sun, inside me a dream: that of good luck.
While the sky was getting dark slowly and the night was thickening behind me, my eyes could see nothing but light.
I could feel the allurement of a question within my soul: what was my wondering before the sea, my gazing into distance, my expectation…?
Other people were looking at the sunset, each one was secluded by modesty and need of contemplation of those who are in a deep intimate relation with themselves.
I recollected my thoughts: “the man looking at the sun…the man in front of the sea…”
I spent my life revising and analyzing these thoughts. I have used art as a way to experience and I have been sailing for forty years on that water I dreamt of crossing.
The backwash is beating and beating from the depth of time onto the beach of my consciousness together with my heartbeats. It’s a well-known voice, reassuring as a lullaby song.
My waiting is full of hope, silence, peace: I know that everything comes and goes.
I always have the same dream: that of good luck.
There is a recurring question:” What do you think while you are painting?”
Of course I understand the meaning of the question, let’s say it’s rightful curiosity, it’s a sign of consideration for me, it’s something like the urging I address God with to get him to explain what crosses his mind when he says his thoughts are not mine. It’s difficult to let a stranger take part into such creative process, it’s actually something hard as it is to get one’s existential bearings: as difficult as heart-searching.
I would reply – the answer is right here on my face…just read it in my look.
However…maybe…to answer the question is also a duty towards myself, because it is difficult to get those who do not know the tricks of the trade to believe that a whole research into life is clear in a light blue background streaked by few disjointed multicoloured strokes of the brush. It’s even more difficult than tracing the cause of a wrinkle engraved on the face.
You need to know the background to a story to understand it, therefore I would start turning to my past.
A glance at my past
When I was young, I painted my imaginative and loving dreams, I also wrote passionate love stories “ to love without face and to the faces of love”. I called my paintings “Eden”, “Flowers”, I wrote poems, I painted beautiful women, spiritual lights, I borrowed the palette from the tropics, I relayed the distances, the hours, the days, I passed through the ages and I opened channels of communication, always casting a glance at the sea, the horizon, waiting for a ship or a South wind, which could bring the smell of far-off summer islands.
My early paintings were naïve, full of mistakes and experiments, they were tragic, strong, bizarre, heavy…they were full of energy and intention.
The following ones were well thought-out, complex, intense, descriptive, passionate.
In my latest figurative period I have reached a great formal perfection, making layer paintings and building nine-floor palaces, veil after veil.
My critics and my admirers have praised my art for its sweetness, fantasy, sensuality, for its poetry, its feeling and pathos, its spirituality and I have let them do it. However I guessed there was something else, something that almost contradicted that exuberance of life which could warm the heart, giving oblivion.
The cornucopia was not the true message.
At last I have understood. I have understood when I have reached the horizon with all my being. That same level which had been unconsciously my source of inspiration since I was a child; that is to say when I have discovered the plain truth with my maturity, taking it up completely in a rational and certain choice.
I have loved everything I have done, but now this story is over: I can’t believe in reincarnation, the body is given once for all to let us experience it, then it passes away.
I have known happiness in my life. The kind of happiness which has remained untouched in time, because it didn’t have a body and I can still smell it in the air as a fragrance. Something vanishing which I cannot explain, reminds me of Itaca and provokes visions I am a witness of.
There’s rhythm in my life, the passing of time draws rising orbits, centre turning, increasing in speed close to a liberating freefall.
I only save the present time, the one of “silence”, of prayers “with inexpressible moans”, as I had realized and contemplated from very far away, looking about the last pages of my book.
This is my study door. I have put a sign here, to show a passage.
I’ve just turned fifty…and maybe the time has come to invent a new youth: beyond this door a blue world is opening up for me.

english version: Alessandra Gaggini

Frammenti

http://www.youtube.com/user/maxloy1950#p/u/6/lJYWlb7LZog

Da giorni sto studiando un quadro, lo ho osservato in tutte le luci del giorno ed anche della notte, quando i colori virano sotto il fascio azzurro dei riflettori. Si distingue dagli altri per una tonalità giallina che non mi è consueta. È ancora uno di quei lavori sui quali passavo una vernice brillante come finitura, cosa che da quest’anno non faccio più.
Questo quadro è un puro soggetto astratto, particolarmente inafferrabile dalla ragione, scoraggia ogni tentativo: o piace o non piace, punto.
Tutto quello che si può dire per definirlo è che da un fondale di luce lascia affiorare una concrezione preziosa che fonde insieme il colore grigio, l’arancio spento, qualche leggera striatura blu, due macchie rosse e qualche pennellata verticale neutra che si perde sfumando in un grigio acceso da un’ombra di rosso. Il tutto a contrasto col nero sul quale sfarina un barbaglio di luce dorata:

cos’è?

Non è niente, ma è bello come è bella una pietra, un cristallo, un legno venato, è straordinario come un fatto naturale, una combinazione unica tra miliardi possibili, una rarità pensata e voluta da me.

Luoghi d'ossimori

http://www.youtube.com/user/maxloy1950#p/a/u/1/6hR1ae-6MtE

http://www.youtube.com/user/maxloy1950#p/u/0/Vpnt70RfgaE

Passi dal libro "Destinazione Itaca"

Apprendimento

Un grumo di colore più denso, contrasti marcati, contatto con la terra in basso e poi, per trapassi tonali e trasparenze, risalgo all’azzurro illuminato di striature d’avorio fino al bianco: un sole come centro spirituale d’energia irradiata.

Più o meno era questa la prassi, perché così m’era parso il mondo, con un sopra e con un sotto di diversa sostanza e, tra i due, il destino di un viaggio.

… Ma poi è arrivata una piccina con un nome da fata Morgana, Margaux, a cui per gioco ho messo in mano il pennello, e lei mi ha riempito tutto lo spazio di segni traversi ponendomi in confusione: è lecito? È verità?

Così ho provato anch’io, ho tracciato bande diagonali ed altri segni bizzarri buttati a caso in mezzo al cielo, che cielo non era più, fino a saturare ogni spazio imitando la piccola pittrice. Poi sono rimasto a guardare pensoso, con occhio scettico, severo, irritato: dov’era finito il mio universo ortogonale? E questo mondo senza sotto e senza sopra, senza centro e senza senso… che giustificazione aveva?

“Siamo creature” pensavo “mediamo dall’universo il criterio d’armonia e l’universo ha ordine e direzione…”

È passato del tempo. Intanto io continuavo a dipingere incrociando pennellate ortogonali per lottizzare lo spazio a norma di legge, sopra, sotto e centro: “le strutture hanno basi d’appoggio e alzate proporzionali, il cielo è vuoto, la densità ha bisogno di respirare…”

Poi un giorno, per sbaglio, ho fatto un frego veloce, poi un altro e con calcolo un altro ancora, ho aggiunto una macchia rossa e l’ho tagliata con un graffio ed all’istante ho capito che era nato un quadro.

Ho guardato Dio, e Dio approvava.

Allora mi sono abbandonato alla felicità dell’evaso e, senza voltarmi indietro, ho oltrepassato il mio orizzonte.

Cos’è la bellezza?

Una sorpresa, ma quando c’è, se ne accorge anche un bambino.

Passi dal libro “Destinazione Itaca”

Suppongo che la mente, quando non è impegnata a contar soldi o ad elaborare effimere strategie di guerra domestica, non faccia che questo: meditare astrattamente il tempo. Vedrei bene questa meditazione come colonna musicale della vita: il tempo come parametro del reale, condizione esistenziale dalla quale non si può prescindere. Non si ha nozione dell’infinito se non per sottrazione: infinito, la dimensione senza tempo.
Tempo come movimento fluido o come segmentazione contigua, fotogrammi in progressione. Bello il rompicapo dello scoprire le differenze tra fotogramma e fotogramma, ci hanno inventato un gioco, un intrattenimento da rotocalco, si può banalizzare tutto giocando alla rovescia con le metafore, ma è consuetudine dell’anima cogliere i trapassi di tono fino ai mutamenti di sostanza.