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Among the artists grouped under the generic name of Sadler Art is Patrick Sadler, who carries out artistic research into the awareness of our reality and the observation of the phenomena we experience in it.
One question the artist asks himself is: Why represent on a material support something that is around lived as thought. In other words, why materialize our projections? And how to bring back, the one who looks at this support, towards this thought? How with an artistic object to bring back an observer towards himself and make him realize that he sees only the reflection of this object with his experience? For this, it is useful to choose a subject that connects the four elements (earth, water, fire, air) being offered to our perception. The theme of the water lilies lends itself well to this philosophical aesthetic experience.
Paint flowers on the water makes it possible to treat several elements simultaneously. The space element (considered as fifth element) is the container in which the other elements constitute the subject of the table. The forms we perceive in this aquatic environment depend as any perception of the distance with which we observe them. If we are approaching forms in a microscopic manner, the initial forms lose their original qualities. A leaf becomes a cluster of cells and approaching even more, we observe molecules and even closer atoms. Beyond, the material manifestation becomes a matter of energy. It can not therefore be claimed that a form exists in itself, but depends on the observer and its distance from the object.
The perception of a form also depends on the light energy. Without light, object shapes are not visible to the eye. The light offers a perceptible reality. The observed real depends from the capacity of the receiver. The allegory of the Plato cave where the shadows projected on the walls are perceived as reality allows an analogy with the projections of light on the retina of the ocular cavity. The painter who looks, considers the reflected shadows of objects with his visual mechanism as real. Our spirit transforms a luminous reflection into solid feeling. The habit of working so since the youngest age is strengthening our belief in this lure. Our thought starts from an erroneous principle and takes us away from an absolute reality towards a relative reality where our intellection is subject to illusion.
Our vision is haunted by bright ghosts, which we even meet with closed eyes. Due to previous luminous injections, our minds project us with a clear light in which we build our universe, which we live as real. The painter in front of his water lily pond is well aware that he observes light energy fluctuations. This phenomenological approach is dependent on the experimentation of phenomena and their interpretation. The resulting paintings and drawings reflect the analytical experience of the perceived image and are conceived as well as appearance and as reality of our real. The photo being considered as close to the representation of our reality, the photographic effects that appear in the work are mesmerizing, even confusing in order to bring the observer to a questioning of our belief in reality. At best, the so-called unrealistic colors in the work (where the water is not necessarily blue and the leaves are not typically green) produce at the one who looks at them an effect of realism leading us to doubt our perceiving consciousness.
This is this doubt, which makes it possible to become aware of the bright nature of our mental image. Sitting in front of a pond makes us experiment the unsteadiness of our impression. Everything instantly moves around and inside us. A thought lasts only a few moments and goes away. Light, changes and moves without return. The sequence of thoughts constructs an unstable mental state. We form an “I” interior facing another “exterior” and believe to be. “I think so I am” part of a wrong principle, because the “I” does only exist momentarily and rebuilds itself constantly in another way. Our “I” has no existence in itself, because we can not catch a shadow on the walls of a cave. We can not catch the light projection on our retina. And we can not touch a painted or drawn water lily, because it does not have any existence on the support. To realize the illusory phenomenon makes it possible for us to detach from our beliefs and the sufferings they generate. Even though we live in space, we will never catch this space with our hands. And it is also in this infinite space, that instead of opening our mind, locks us up in chimeras.