Shadow Shifts

SHADOWS SHIFT, Ingrid Simons

Antwerp, 21 November 2010

Dear Ingrid,

In your studio I have been observing your works with fascination. But the specific and intense viewing of your paintings I had the privilege to experience cannot possibly be put into words. And that indeed is a good thing, for viewing remains primordial and words do not suffice.

However, a promise is a promise, hence this first verbal attempt in the form of a letter.

It is astonishing how you make landscapes appear on the canvas in such a suggestive manner using a minimum of means. These are not nature based images but interiorised landscapes that appear from the subconscious memory and acquire a powerful individuality during the painting process. This is achieved not only by limiting yourself to just about two basic colors like, for instance black and parties next to bright beige-like tones but also the nervous touches in particular. Simultaneously a spontaneously elaborated and thoughtful method that creates an image which, as it were, a paradox existing between a romantic feeling and an indeterminate threat.

The fact that, as you told me, you enjoy walking in nature by night at full moon is obvious. It is the moonlight that creates the sharp contrasts whereby the confines between light and darkness become indistinct. And despite the strong effects of the contrasts, there exists in your images a soft and sad atmosphere of something that can no longer be recovered.

These are alternative images of landscapes stimulating our sensual observation; we think we recognize something to which we mentally add our own images from memory and passed experiences. When you get closer the recognition disappears more and more being replaced by the pure art of painting.

You only notice the rich strokes of the brush, vivacious and pasty. Your canvases become half-reliefs.

It appears as if you not only draw the mountainsides and trees with your brush, you mold them as well. Your individual and subjective interpretation of a landscape reality in which you link harmony to contrast is an ode to viewing and the functioning of our memory.

In friendship and admiration,

Florent Bex

Honorary Director, Museum of Modern Art Antwerp (MUHKA)

Eredirecteur Musem van Hedendaagse Kunst Antwerpen

Preface text from a letter for catalog of Ingrid Simons by the director of the Museum of Modern Art Antwerp translated from Dutch.