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"Alive To It All" - Some Notes by Peter Griffin
I have spent the last 12 months making the work for this exhibition. All the paintings were made in my studio in London whilst all the prints were made in Cambridge at the Cambridge Print Studio which is run by my friend Kip Gresham. I really enjoyed the interchange from working alone here in London and then travelling up to Cambridge to work with Kip. It was interesting to see how things that I had been doing in my paintings fed into the prints and visa versa.
The exhibition ‘Alive To It All’ was shown in a new exhibiting space The Centro Cultural San Clemente in Toledo, Spain. San Clemente was until very recently a very old convent which held up to 800 nuns, but was now converted into a beautiful, modern space for exhibitions.
Like most artists I have been asked many times what my paintings are about and I have always replied they are about “what it means to be alive”. This is reflected in the titles of some of my exhibitions “Love, Life, Love”, “Life is Now” (La Vida es un ahora), “Stealing from Time” and “Identities”. In using the term “what it means to be alive” I am simply saying that reflected in my work are observations on human emotions and behaviour. In some ways it could be described as how human beings, both as individuals and members of a larger society, deal with life.
The French existentialist writer Albert Camus once used the phrase “the absurdity of life”. I have always taken this to mean that life, per se, is non-sensical and it is only in how you live your life that gives life meaning. In many ways the most universal interpretation of this statement describes much of what the content of my work has been concerned with for many years.
It is through my interests in this way of looking at life that brought me into contact with people who shared similar attitudes towards humanity and the human condition. As a consequence I have been very fortunate over the years to work in conjunction with individuals and foundations such as The Pablo Neruda Foundation in Santiago, Chile, The Ortega y Gasset Foundation both here in Spain and in Argentina and The Victor Jara Foundation in Santiago, Chile in which I and the Chilean/American playwrite Ariel Dorfman collaborated on a project which travelled to various venues before being shown at the European Parliament in Strasbourg to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the European Commission for Human Rights.
However on Dec 31st 2005 my thoughts switched from the universal to the very personal when I suffered a sudden and near fatal heart attack.
Although it is not something that I would wish to repeat it was nevertheless, in retrospect, a fascinating experience. An intense battle took place between my body, which just wanted to let go, and my mind, which was fighting like crazy to stay alive. It took the best part of a year for me to fully recover my fitness and energy. During that time I went from being allowed to walk 2 minutes per day to gradually spending a little time in my studio, after 3 months, and to eventually reaching a stage, after one year, which allowed me to start the paintings which form this exhibition. All the paintings and prints on show here are closely related to this experience. Some such as “New Year’s Eve”, “Pressure” or “Deep Inside” deal directly with the experience of nearly dying. Whilst others such as “Resurrection”, “Life Force” or “Mortal Coil” deal directly with the relief I felt to be still alive. Nearly all the works in this exhibition contain either a head or a heart. This is partly referring to the 2 areas in which I felt the pain during the attack but, more than that, it was also the 2 areas of my body that battled it out between life and death. So in using these 2 symbols I have tried to reflect through the language of paint and print, and the expressionist rather than the formal use of colour, both my flirtation with death and my feelings of “what it means to be alive”
Peter Griffin, London, September 2007
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