Figurative scenes reflect my fascination with the narrative potential of the painting. In a sense, they are the antithesis of still life – the static landscape is a background for dynamic action, referring to the interpretative ambiguity of the early Renaissance pictures. Their mnemonic function determined rich figurative iconography, clear for the people of the era, but completely hermetic for us. This narrative inconsistency made me think about psychokinesis.
The term combining the disciplines of psychology and mechanics (Greek psyche – soul, kinesis – movement) defines the ability to move objects by sheer force of will, without a touch, just by looking at them. This suggests an association with pictorial phenomenology described by Merleau-Ponty in his essay “Eye and Mind”: onlookers become the look and in consequence – what they see. Psychokinesis can be a metaphor for our existence in the world and more narrowly – the picture manual.