_{Image courtesy of Rebecca Carron}

Interview: Rebecca Carron

Luca Curci talks with the artist Rebecca Carron during CONSCIOUSNESS of ANIMA MUNDI festival 2017 in VENICE.

Rebecca Carron (1968, Ghent, Belgium) has been keen on drawing and painting since her childhood. After choosing another professional path, she took up painting for real in 2008. She paints fine art with a rough edge. Emotions, vitality, atmosphere is what her paintings are about. Powerful brushstrokes and daring color combinations contribute to the strong expression of some of her portraits. Her cityscapes and landscapes are more subdued where fine and roughly painted strokes, subtle and more outspoken colors balance each other. They often exude a sense of order and harmony, detachment even.

Some paintings are not as noncommittal as they might seem at first sight. It is as if Carron is addressing herself to the more beautiful side of life, be it every now and then with a dark, bitter edge. The liveliness, the visual poetry which she tries to bring to life in her individual paintings, want to express a universal sense of dignity. Sarcasm is unfamiliar to her. Even if you can discover melancholy and doubt in some of her paintings, the belief in our better inside remains intact.

 

_{Image courtesy of Rebecca Carron}

 

Luca Curci – Has the artwork presented been created for the festival or as a part of preexisting works?

Rebecca Carron – The artwork presented is part of preexistings works and, actually has been chosen in close cooperation with Domenico Fallacara, It’s LIQUID Group, who had taken the first steps to get in touch with me. It felt comfortable to me that It’s LIQUID Group really took the time to look into my artwork and that is how we came to the four works presented in “Consciousness”.

 

_{Image courtesy of Rebecca Carron}

 

L.C. – Please tell me what are you working at right now…

R.C. – Right now means “right now”. I was not able to paint for months because of a new atelier being built from scratch. Now that I am settled I feel I am going a slightly different way in may work than before. The first paintings I recently painted are still recognizable and figurative but they are somehow more detached and there is an abstraction seeping in. As if I am moving on to a more universal expression.

 

_{Image courtesy of Rebecca Carron}

 

L.C. – What is art for you?

R.C. – Art for me is exactly defined in these words from Robert Henri, who lived about a century ago: “It is not too much to say that art is the noting of the existence of order throughout the world, and so, order stirs imagination and inspires one to reproduce the beautiful relationship existing in the universe, as best as one can.” (Robert Henri, The Art Spirit, p. 142)

 

_{Image courtesy of Rebecca Carron}

 

L.C. – What’s your background? What is the experience that has influenced your work the most?

R.C. – I have been keen on drawing, painting from my childhood but was raised in a family where art was not that important. So, I did not take serious myself my interest in art for a long time and, as a result, did not ‘study’ art at a major art academy. Later on, I did study art, though, by following short-term courses from about 2000 till 2010, a.o. in the ateliers of several painters, and by reading a lot about art and art techniques. This mixture of influences, I feel, have really enriched me in a very unique way and I am very happy for it. There are certainly several experiences that have influenced me but one I can recall right away is an interview I saw some years ago (and still have recorded) with Sam Dillemans, a very authentic painter, I think. His powerful and uncompromising opinions about what it means to him to be an artist were like a wake-up call to me.

 

_{Image courtesy of Rebecca Carron}

 

L.C. – What role does the artist have in society?

R.C. – The same role as art has as described above: to reproduce the beautiful relationship existing in the universe, in all modesty, and, in that way, getting to the soul of people who open themselves to this beautiful relationship. It is more and more important to me that art/the artist can have a soothing effect on his environment.

 

_{Image courtesy of Rebecca Carron}

 

L.C. – What is your creative process like?

R.C. – It starts with being open to what I see around me and capturing images from real life that strike me, e.g. a certain perspective or a particular landscape. I take pictures of them with my camera. It can be people as well that strike me and that I feel like painting. Then I ask them if they want to be my model and, if they agree, I organize a camera session. Some of those pictures lay there for several years before I take them up again and, suddenly, they do inspire me to really start up a new painting. The painting process foregoes in my atelier, where I am on my own in my safe haven.

 

_{Image courtesy of Rebecca Carron}

 

L.C. – What do you think about It’s LIQUID Platform?

R.C. – It’s LIQUID Platform is very new to me. It is you who selected me, and I am very happy about it and grateful for it. I hope being part of ‘Consciousness’ this year is only the start of a fruitful cooperation.