OK, there´s a new image down below, somew people have urged me to post some more of my drawings and paintings. Pity you're not in Petropolis, Brazil, I'm about to open a show with my paintings and drawings, probably in May.

Wish me luck!

 

 

Hi, nobody

(Nobody reads me anyway!)

But hi anyway.

D'you like the image above?

So did I, when I've painted it.

Well...Hello...Goodbye!

Hi.
Every Christmas Eve I write a message of Merry 'Xmas and a happy New Year in this blog.
Then some lady in the USA writes me and thanks me for the message. I reply, asking if we could keep on talking during the next year, and it's the same as nothing.
Well, I guess they think I'm a Brazilian monster, living in the Amazon jungle and ready to eat them alive!
I'm not. I'm married (sort of), I speak four languages, I'm a writer, an illustrator and a journalist, an intellectual of sorts (am I, really?!) and I'm only trying to be nice.
Well... Merry Christmas!

THE MAN WHO WASN’T THERE

 

The picture you’re seeing above is just a small drawing, A4, made with the help of some pennyeach felter point pens that I’ve acquired in a little flea market just around the corner, and a bit of computer magic. Whatever magic I can afford with the tools I have in hand. Tools of a poor artist, which is me indeed. (Well, I couldn't upload the image, problems with the page, sorry about that, but there are images of mine inside the blog, somewhere).

But it could have been a painting on a canvas, say, 150 X 200 cm, or whatever, where I could splash the oils and collages and create something big. So why didn’t I do it? Please reread the last line of the precedent paragraph.

I’ve been researching the life and art of a famous painter called Mati(as) Klarwein, you know, the guy who did the painting that served as cover for Santana’s album Abraxas? Ring a bell? Well, I’ve wacked myself out after that painting of a gorgeous black Madonna when I was in my fifteens (which is what I was when the album reached the stores, back in 1970). Only much later in my life had I the opportunity of making love (to put it mildly!) with a gorgeous black girl almost the same size as that one on the cover, and it was the cover that made me wet-dream about black girls ever since.

Well, this is not a sexual log. The thing with Mati is: he was born of a well-to-do family, he had money, he could pursue at ease whatever he wanted, and what he wanted was to become an artist. Which he did, after being tutored by the likes of Fernand Léger, Salvador Dali, Ernst Fuchs. No wander he became that good!

By 1975 I saw some very bad reproductions, but there they were, of Klarwein’s art in a Brazilian magazine about the Occult which I rather not mention. It’s long gone, and that’s no wander either! I’ve been stumbling upon his work every now and again, so I took time, recently, to do a thorough research on him.

The man lived shortly in Brazil, around late 50’s or early 60’s, as well as in many places of the world. His family had a house in New York, which he sold and, with the money acquired, took his time to travel the world and do his paintings. Well, he had money, I don’t. Does that makes him a schmuck? Of course not. I love his work, as well as the work of many other painters, and Dali and Fuchs are just two that I can mention, to the point I made absolutely a matter of honor to visit the house where Dali was born, in Figueres, Catalonia, Spain, back in 2001, only one year before Klarwein’s death. I couldn’t make to Cadaqués and Port Lligat then, but if I’m ever back in Spain, I will.

If I had studied with Dali, would that have improved upon my painting? Needless to ask, right? There are some advantages in being self-taught when it comes to painting in canvas, and that’s exactly what I am, discounting three years I’ve spent in a school of design in Sao Paulo, learning how to draw and write comics. But there are a lot of drawbacks too, one of them being that I don’t know the ‘tips’ Dali, Fuchs and Léger gave to Klarwein regarding collages, how to mix oils, which brushes and canvas to use, that sort of thing, which I regret not knowing.

Well, what are you complaining about, then? Eh bien, the thing is, aside from being a journalist (unemployed at the moment), a writer with some books published (small presses, all self-financed, but one), I’m also a fine art drawer and a painter and I’m willing to work in this area. But who wants to know about me and my work? I’m constantly sending samples of them to publishing houses and recording companies, on the attempt of producing covers of books and CDs to them, something I feel I can do, since aside from doing the illustrations, I have a fairly good knowledge of literature, of rock’n’roll and the things assorted to it, from jazz to experimentalism, also classical composers, en fin, a lot of things.

But do I get an answer from these people? Hah! Never!

I was beginning to convince myself that I’m not as good as I think, that I’m only fooling myself into it, and almost tossed everything away when, by chance, I’ve sent some samples of my work to a famous British illustrator, whose name I rather not state here, who commented upon them and said I should do this, and not so much of that, but never said the work was shitty, insisting with me to go on and keep trying, then try some more. It is thanks to him that I keep on knocking on heaven’s door!

Well, that’s it, I’ve said it. Maybe you’d tell me to go f..k myself, or maybe you too are an artist, or a writer, who has a lot of things covered under your mattress, ashamed of showing them to people, who never had the opportunity of being in touch with the likes of Dali, Fuchs, Klarwein.

Don’t be ashamed.

I’m not ashamed, I’m just pissed off! I remember a rhyme from somewhere, which goes like that: As I went upstairs/I saw a man who wasn’t there/he wasn’t there again, today/I wish, I wish he’d go away…

Well, mes dames et monsieurs: je eté la, je suis la, je serais la encore vivant, that is to say, I was there, I am there, I will be there everyday, while there’s life inside my body.

Please don’t pass me by.

Please take notice!

 

MÁRCIO SALERNO (December the 4th, 2008)