Carmelo Lettere
"Painting always requires intelligence and a calling, even more than systems and technique;
but above all, it requires energy.
And just as time knows no rest, energy knows no ends; its source is inexhaustible.
In art there has always been, I believe, a philosophical approach and a poetic one.
A shout, a howl, a moan or a burp have for us the same eloquence
as a group of notes emitted by an operatic voice in past centuries.
But without transfiguration, without rhetorical mediation,
creative adaptation, without esthetic synthesis,
experience neither becomes fixed nor is suspended; it disappears in the process of being lived.
Whether you speak of intelligence or sentiment, or of both ( in the sense of "emotional reason" ),
it's always a matter of interpretive variables situated according to a particular time and place.
The easier a circus number appears, the more perfect it is, and the more masterly is the deception.
The trick consists in keeping grace, but also its opposite,
accident and misfortune , hidden from the audience.
Panic is often part of the game and the imminence of error or uncertainty
is a fruitful way to engage attention.
But the rapture of possession and identification is, when it's there, a higher mystery.
It is no longer a trick, a convention, a trade, an illusion tied to the anxiousness that everything end well;
but suspension, identification, magic; it is art!
If your voice is not song, how can your song be voice?"
Carmelo Lettere
Translated by Nancy Canepa
"Visual Entropy" Mixed media 48X48X20
"Parade with Drummer" Oil on board 20X30
For more information on Carmelo Lettere and a full collection of his work currently available
please Contact Polonaise Art Gallery.