Today is the day most of us probably are trying to return back to work. Still feeling bamboozled by the last few weeks of not working, eating and drinking too much and spending maybe a little too much time with relatives you see infrequently. You now have to remember that you need to change the year to 2018 on anything you write and you are possibly staring at an inbox full of emails which you aren’t quite sure if they are really important or not, as you desperately try to remember what you were doing before Christmas.
This is like a little corner of hell for me, as I like to be organised at all times and firing up the laptop, only to realise that I can’t remember my password is irksome.
This is why I have chosen Taulé’s “On est en enfer ” or “We are in Hell” painting today. It’s simplistic in its subject a rather dull staircase, lined with brick walls, light cascading in from an open doorway, illuminating the corridor.
Painted in 2006, oil on canvas, this work captures light beautifully. The reflections on the stairs and highlighting sections of the wall is something truly magical for me. The colour pallet and intensity adding to the feeling of a dark, dank stairwell, with something almost heavenly at the top, but more of the same darkness below.
The painting, as does many items of his work, has an Escheresque type feel to it, with the stairs being reflected above as they are below, creating a surrealist undertone to this piece, and presenting the audience with an impossibility made possible.
Taulé has a varied background, training in architecture, but also took part as a performer and street artist in the 1960’s, his life experience shining through his work. He has been labeled as part of the hyper realistic art movement, but also a representative of the new figurative movement. His paintings of halls and chambers edge between the reality and a surrealism bathed in a transcendental light.
A lot of Taulé’s work have reflections of past masters, utilising their techniques to refine his own. If you want to see more of Taulé’s work you can find it here.
What do you think of Taulé, why not tell me in the comments? Like this post? Why not share it?
Widowcranky 
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