Saison n°1 2001

Hervé Télémaque made this painting, called Saison n°1, with what looks like acrylic on canvas. There is such a freedom in the way it is painted, like a drawing on canvas. The image seems to be built up from loosely defined areas of color – blocks of color rather than brushstrokes. The paint feels quite flat, with very little texture, and the thin black lines that criss-cross the surface are like the lead in a stained-glass window, binding these areas together. What I love is how the colours overlap and bleed into one another, creating a sense of movement and depth. Look at the figure on the left, see how these areas of colour combine to make something that feels very real and solid, despite the fact it's kind of weird and disjointed. Télémaque reminds me a bit of Francis Picabia, who also liked to combine figuration with abstraction. Both artists are comfortable with ambiguity and contradiction, they don’t feel the need to fill everything in or make sense of it all.