2005, 20 paintings on blotter paper In the winter of 2004 I started this series of twelve paintings, Towards the End , in an unsettled, confused state, searching for new paths of the soul. Though I had always worked on paper, until then I had used either handmade paper (which I make myself at Dobbin Mills in Brooklyn) or Japanese paper: papers that are remarkable for their tactility and beauty. But this time, I wanted to challenge myself and chose instead a humble material: the large blotter papers normally used in the etching room. The series follow a trajectory, from color to color and emotion to emotion, inspired by Expressionism (Arshyle Gorky, Lee Miller) and poets such as Baudelaire and Rimbaud, who wrote about colors’ symbolism. In the beginning is a wordless, black abyss; solitude of the beginnings maybe, surrounded by a field of red-hot rage that claws, tears, screams and breaks. Tendrils of words are thrown over the hole. The intensity of feeling overflows like a cup full of blood; I plunge willfully into the night and find it, surprisingly, illuminated. The hole is still there - but has changed in nature because I am guided by a trail of stars, a configuration of milky ways that organize the darkness. Then I have to go back to red, orange, black and white to depict the inner battles and conflicts. The space is streaked with crossed swords, shiny with armors, as in a battle painted by Paolo Ucello. Again comes peacefulness, a sea of emerald and blues, as if I were held in the embrace of a dreamt mother with necklaces of foam. From there I soar into a vertical Syrian pink, joy, jubilation, I climb ladders and trapezes. Everything is possible. Red and black come back but under other guises, armed by architecture and pervaded by the whites and grays of a silent peace where yesterdays are only pale shadows. I dance in orange circles like a bee, a butterfly in an open field. I soar in red columns of ambition and pride. And finally I surrender and let life guide me, show me open paths, clearings of pure white strewn with skeins of blue and red, infinite perspectives.