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Excerpts of graphics and poetry fanzine À Quoi Ça Rime; Edition no. 3, 2025, ParisDesign by GwlgraphismeArtworks and text by Jana VillaluzFull fanzine available here >
"I strive to combine our shadows with the noblest of darks"
"I strive to combine our shadows with the noblest of darks"
My relationship to art is deeply intertwined with my relationship to my body. Drawing is a sedative to my restless hands, painting is synonymous to dancing. Experiencing great art can send me to jump, flinch or stomp my feet. When I sketch, the visual world vibrates through my body, and I am left to trace these vibrations.
In truth though, what I’m after isn’t art after all. I am in the pursuit of beauty and enigma, which I find not only in polished wood or intricate seashells, I keep finding it in the ugly as well. I keep finding it in the wet soil, in the spider's nest, with the crawling bugs under the muddy rock. I find it in the false note, in the wound, in the knotty hair. I find it in aching solitude and maddening company. It is the beauty of this to which I dedicate myself.
And so when I paint, my crooked spine produces a power, a blind but determined power with which I strive to combine our shadows with the noblest of darks, with comforting shades of blue and acidic yellows, with mollifying greens and hazardous reds. A pursuit that will guide me for a lifetime.
What is the source of your inspiration?
What is the source of your inspiration?
I take inspiration from contemporary jazz, my relationships, childhood, to name a few. But it is also the materials involved in making art that inspire me. Sometimes the craving of the sound of pencil scratching paper or mixing paints together into a new color is what propels me to create.
What is your relation to poetry?
What is your relation to poetry?
Much like paintings, poems can be regarded instantaneously and yet are like deep wells that never run out of potency. In my youth, I have discovered how words in poetry bore a different weight, as if they were made of a different fabric, something more luminous and powerful. I like how a poet can make each syllable pulsate, make each word paint with colors. I took up writing poems as I fell in love with composing with words, subjecting them to rhythm and aligning them with imagery. This compositional element of poetry is something I feel strongly drawn to till this day.
Your favorite poets
Your favorite poets
Rumi, Rilke, Japanese Zen monks..
Your bedside book
Your bedside book
“The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle” by Haruki Murakami. Not a poetry book in a traditional sense, yet it is Murakami’s inventive metaphors and his attention to the sensory world that makes his prose all the more enchanting.
A quote that you really love
A quote that you really love
“You will never be able to experience everything. So, please, do poetical justice to your soul and simply experience yourself.”
― Albert Camus, Notebooks, 1935-1951
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