Patrick Sadler
Our visual awareness depends on the distance with which an object or subject is perceived. When we get closer to someone, we keep in mind their overall appearance, but closely, the shapes seen from far away, disappear.
New forms appear with the change of proximity. It is the same for their contours, which lose their reality when trying to grasp them by approaching them. It's a bit like trying to catch a rainbow with our hands.
While in my landscape paintings, the goal is to reconstruct the mental reality by moving away from the painting, the paintings of human bodies can generate the opposite effect. As there is nothing more attractive than a woman's body, we are quickly taken by its appearance and we want to approach it.
But up close, we realize that in front of us, there is nothing but traces of paint on a flat tense support that contribute to the lure. This awareness of the illusion allows us to question our vision of the mental image that we have of our human body.
Our personality is based on a mental projection of a "body in itself", which becomes vacuous when viewed from very near and very far. The empty space, which gives the body its closed appearance, permeates it and lets it dissolve cognitively, if one looks at it from very close and very far. This way of looking at the act shakes our usual perception of the appearing solidity of the human body.