Sicioldr

“It often takes me some time to understand my paintings because I am accustomed to seeing them. There are too many dozens of working hours behind them. In order to avert this effect, Titian used to hide his paintings and take them back after several months. To declutter his sight. But sometimes, at night, when I wake up because I am thirsty or simply insomniac, I see them in a different light. Those eyes silently look at me and sometimes convey a dark and indecipherable feeling. It is hard to explain with words. Maybe because these faces and concepts do not really exist. I do not use models. They were born with a spontaneity that I do not even recognize as mine. Basically we have nothing to do with what we create. We have some moments. We cannot decide for how long or when. All this is to say that painting has recently acquired a more serious meaning to me. I haven’t attended the Academy because I thought that drawing would become a job and I would lose the freedom to follow myself. I enrolled in the faculty of computer science and continued to draw like I have always done in my life: secretly, on desks, feeling guilty because I was stealing precious time from my studies. My family does not have financial problems but isn’t particularly wealthy, I couldn’t and can’t afford being the kind of artist that wakes up at 11 and has breakfast at the bar while his parents pay for everything. This is why I have been studying algorithms, maths, programming for many years ... I will soon get my degree and I see an abyss in front of me. On the one hand a world of great economic, technic and pragmatic security, that would allow me to be financially self-sufficient, but would absorb 80% of my energies. On the other hand I am developing a few skills such as painting, digital and traditional illustration, 3D sculpture... But I may fail. And need to be supported for ages. I think of very big works that require full-time and absolute devotion. Ten, twelve hours a day. But I know that if I don’t make money out of them I won’t ever see them finished, they will never come to light. They will get lost like beautiful ideas in the abyss of my mind. My technique needs constant practice. A drawing I made one year ago seems to me like a child’s work. So what shall I do now?
I know illustrators and painters that earn a living and make money out of their works. Some of them do another small job to supplement their income. And some choose illustration as a small job to supplement their income. And I have to spend the whole day trying to solve abstruse problems on arid websites that deal with mathematical functions, standards, libraries. I have to spend 90% of my time doing things I have little interest in. Maybe this is right. But I feel very sorry. I do not ask for fame or success. Only for what is necessary to be self-sufficient.”

^{Sicioldr, email sent on the 24th July 2014 at 11.27}