© Alma Webou, Kalaju, courtesy of With The Short St Gallery
122 x 76 cm. © Private Collection II Brocard
It's strange how some paintings remind me of perfume or wine. Maybe I'm in it influenced by reading the first 15 volumes of manga's great "The Drops of God" * Dedicated to the tasting of vintages. Or
family culture me she sent this curiosity for other essential oils and absolutes from our ancient roots in Grasse in Provence.
Between these worlds, that flirt with three main senses such as sight, taste or smell, there are frail bridges. I remember the difficulty of describing a Mouton Rothschild 2009 last month, while enjoying its already small balance and richness and complexity of this very young baby.
other hand, I keep images at the top of this bottle of cologne lavender amber, probably from the illustrious house Santa Maria Novella in Florence. She was in the dressing room of my grandparents. I never failed to put on my hands which prompted my grandmother to consider a moment of nostalgia with me into the fragrance and make me consider a possible nose ... It did not happen though.
wine, perfume, picture ... Words fail to describe our emotions there. For example, when it becomes impossible to recognize certain smells, it is often easier to proceed by analogy or to find the images of his past. Often when I pass sites in the city, escaping the smell makes me think of the mill shop that was at the bottom of a garden in Limoges: the smell of wet wood chips that are starting to deteriorate into a tiny mold . The house no longer exists but there I was suddenly immersed in this world of dust, sweet like the early days of childhood. This painting
Alma Webou, great artist disappeared from the community of Bidyadanga near Broome, affects me. His cutting vertically from bottom to top, reminds me the basic notes of a perfume, red, animal, carnal, like sprays of old (small civet or ambergris) embellished with heady notes of the East or a major merlot.
Then comes a cooler tone in blue-green, as a kind of composition wet grass slightly lemony or minty. Alma at home it is a landscape, I can not exclude areas more hospitable to his native region, beyond the desert.
Then we get to the heart of the painting, in what may be considered as the base notes of perfume. A complex set it blossoms between red, green, blue and white ... A sort of convolution and motion in this sequence of alternating stresses of different states. We are at the center of the path.
The upper floors of the rise in white paint, hemmed just a thin red thread. The emanations are more discreet, we find the top notes of the perfume, more ephemeral. Bacchus would see perhaps a more mineral tone almost close to the flint, as this white desert, a legacy of primitive seas that the artist may also wish to represent them on this journey of initiation.
Beyond these correspondences it is interesting to note that this painting dates from the last years of production of the artist. Five to ten years ago she shared a style much cursive patterns with more clearly separate guidelines a bit like the artist Jack Weaver. Then a break has led to a field composed of in-prepared food using multiple dithered.
Webou Alma, great colorist, inventor of the native landscape has also inspired the young artist Danel Walbidi already presented at different locations on the blog. I am also impatient to see the 3 stars on Monday that it had had the opportunity to lend to the Abbey for the exhibition Daoulas Inuit Art - Aboriginal Art.
Ultimately, the language of this painting of Alma from the estate of the artist, contains a kind of universal language. Occasionally she makes me think of the great Mark Rothko.
Metaphors, correspondence between artists and different worlds interact with fertility in this work in the twilight of life.
* Manga "The Drops of God" and AGI Tadashi Shu Okimoto, French edition Glénat.
few winks in the footsteps of a collection. Early balbuciements to greater discoveries. Nomadic peoples, the Aborigines contemporary paintings ... 
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