Pensamiento

One cannot be a mere spectator, astonished, condemning and living with what is happening every day in this world of ours and in this era that we are to live and contemplate.

We must do something. We humans that share this planet with the rest of beings inhabiting it and that have the same right to enjoy and suffer in it, just as us, must not assist impassive at the destruction of life, the killings, the violations of every right, the tortures of all nature and all kinds of abuses. And it is not only by saying NO, but by actively participating; not by condemning but by collectively fighting against every injustice and horror.

What does the painter do before this panorama? He does what the rest of humans do; either he assists at “the great show of the world” as another spectator, more or less impassive, or he stops, looks, assumes and captures it in the canvas as a way to rebel against all those crimes, against humankind and against all the injustices surrounding and strangling us before our helplessness. That is why we have to make the canvas shout, so that with our strokes, colours and shapes we can express what we feel and present it to the world with all its cruelty and nakedness, so that we can yell LOOK! ENOUGH! Is this what we want? LET US DO SOMETHING!

Jorge Rando, Paris, June, 2001