Elena Climent
To My Parents

Home Page | Exhibitions | Newsletters | Artists | Services | People | Current | Contents

To My Parents
Elena Climent

This show is dedicated to my parents and their home which was so much a part of their lives.

After my mother’s death in 1994 it became apparent that the house would eventually have to be sold and this caused me a lot of sadness.

As I walked through the house, every single corner, object, every room made me relive memories with such power that sometimes I felt as if the house were full of ghosts: of family, of friends, of Sunday meals, the fireplace lighted, conversations, sounds of laughter, of wine being poured into glasses, discussions, the phone ringing, my mother’s voice, my father’s voice, my sisters as children, as teenagers—all this echoed in my mind.

4. Dresser with Doll and Old Studio Photograph, 1996

And then all was silent, and I stood there wondering whether perhaps I was the ghost and my memories the reality.

The two worlds in my parents’ home were coexisting in my soul: the world of the present—silent, still, lifeless—and the other, the one of timelessness, where everything alive seemed to be trapped in the objects and spaces that had been witnesses of past events.

I felt torn between such feelings. Of course I had to choose the present, or else it would mean insanity, and my parents’ home had to go. But first I needed to rescue the part of my soul that was still there, trapped like a genie in a bottle.

This is how I came to work on a series of paintings in which I reproduced objects where I had deposited so much of myself throughout my life.

I am not at all convinced that painting is a "healing experience." In preparing this show I have gone through a turmoil of emotions and I can’t say I have liberated myself from the sadness of having lost my parents. I did succeed, nevertheless, in freeing their spirits from their home. When I enter it today it feels like an empty shell and I think I can let go of it now.

I still find this difficult and I know I will always have to deal with a painful feeling. But at least I can defy time, if only a little, through the act of painting which allows me to put together images and emotions from different parts of my memory.

My parents’ home will go, as will all of us who knew it and loved it. One day there will only be a few paintings left and no one will know where they came from.

I hope these paintings will communicate some of the feelings I’ve gone through in creating them. If so, I will consider myself satisfied. But in the end, the art will emerge with a life of its own.