Opposite's Song
Angel Terron
In the Mediterranean area, every cave has its own myth; many stalactites take human shapes encased in true darkness. They are like firefly that, in the freshness of summer solstice days, will be appearance and representation of life for the child with divine curiosity: its articulated forms conceal in the body the secret of vast geometries and its light irradiates the intimacy of electrons and energy.
This dual consideration, for the essence of things on the one side, for the joyful exterior on the other, constitutes already a characteristic feature of the personality of men of the Balearic Islands, like Ramon Llull, who wrote his most intimate pieces under the shelter of Majorcan nature, philosophizing in Paris and Tunisia. Or like Joan Alcover, being a gentleman in the Parliament of Madrid, being a gifted sad poet in his moments of total desolation.
Dolores Sampol has lived so far in the secret of her luminous sensitivity. Her aesthetic tenderness has rescued gothic paintings of Majorcan ancient art, illuminating those jewels that preserve a labyrinth of ancient emotions... Some of her drawings, surprisingly modern, are the fruit of this marvelous craftsmanship. Gradually Dolores employs drawings as agenda notes in which the text - sometimes in connection with a poetic voice- is mixed with figuration, being the final result of an overwhelming plasticity. From her paintings, a clear light emerges; gold and silver remain on the canvas as beautiful traces of her work...
Two worlds, apparently opposite to each other coexist in her work. One of them is close as life itself; like as the leaves of a slender palm tree, like the sienna of crumbling walls, like the ardent juxtaposition of buttress arches in Palma’s Cathedral, like the private wardrobe wide open to show the privacy of its objects as if our "voyeurism" had slaughtered that insomniac animal. Dolores Sampol does a vivid reading of our everyday life; with an almost photographic daring, but dust of her brushstroke inform us only about the game, the interpretation is much more daring.
The other world elevates poetry as a norm, gestural strokes, mirages of waves, spirals and wings in multifaceted scaffolding. The voice of the poets, Blai Bonet and Cirlot among others, is a source of inspiration. The beautiful necessity of a child breathes and survives in the purity of her gaze.
Dolores Sampol internalizes the impact of our surroundings while externalizing her feelings. In one of her small paintings, the figure of a woman -vaguely Goya`s style- is surrounded by a mass of gray clouds; a clear image of the great question of the woman facing a bewildered world. Let this iconic representation to serve as a means to underline the sensitiveness of Sampol’s paintings; and to fuse together in blank my meditation.
Mallorca, 1989