In
1899, painter Auguste Renoir said to Julie Manet whose uncle would
occasionally do Indian-ink wash drawing, “there is only black and white
in painting. We must give white its intensity by relying on the value of
what surrounds it and not by adding white. In a great painter’s works,
how beautiful and simple the whites are since he knows how to make room
for them”. With Dabancourt, that central role
conveys the full power of his indian-ink pieces and it works wonder! We
all live emotions but the artist feels them deeper. He is endowed with a
singular ability to feel that takes shape in his creative force. The
richer the feeling, the more inspiration he draws from it. Working on
his paintings, Dabancourt does so with feelings. He has to love what was
left to mature for a night, for days, for months.
“It
operates or it doesn’t”, he says, “I must vibrate too from what my inks
reveal, from my stroke, from the light that springs right out from the
Black”. And it doesn’t always work…
To create means to admit defeat too
owing to one’s own critical judgement that won’t spare the creator’s
ego. You can tell the true artist from his or her sense of sacrifice.
He or she must be able to abdicate
in front of a painting that doesn’t come to life. The secret of the
beautiful piece lies in the painter’s uncompromising and demanding
challenge with himself or herself, like the writer who tears apart his
or her imperfect pages. Indian-ink work can’t tolerate mediocrity.
Paradoxically the light emanating from Black must anticipate the virgin
whiteness of a paper, without making any concessions, from which an
emotion freed by the contrast kept under control of two colours that
match for the better without the worst emerges.
With Dabancourt,
Black and White are so much in harmony that their reciprocal
faithfulness is tantamount to ensured eternity that will outlive the
painter’s life, who remains delicately and sentimentally attached to the
Indian ink the way water is to its riverbed.
With Eric Dabancourt,
Black and White become a colour, the colour of a soul deeply moved and
which generously and poetically gives vent to its sensitiveness to the
world.