What is the explanation for Vytautas Pliura's contrasting styles of unsparing
realism in his writing and innocent beauty in his watercolors?
They are, perhaps, manifold.
First, a beauteous innocent style, can still communicate harsh content.
The subject of "Slave's Quarters" might have all the more ironic punch when
delivered in a painterly manner of softened colors which "opens up"
or puts the viewer "off guard".
Second, it is a simple reality that many painters, like Marc Chagall, choose,
the light, almost disembodied, floating colors of a child's painting in their work.
Perhaps it is, to some, an attempt to grasp at the healing salve of color to
assauge the wounds of life. Pure Beauty ! To others, the floating colors may
be an attempt to dissociate and lift away, like helium baloons, from
the overstimulus of pain too common upon the earth.
In either case, Vytautas Pliura, is all too familiar with the subject title of his painting,
"The Slave's Quarters". Vytautas has experienced societal imprisonment,
regarding his homosexuality, stigmatization of mental illness regarding
his bi-polar diagnosis. These realities are all the more pointed, in the face of
the known correlations between a mental diagnosis and artistic genius .
Furthermore as a result of societal prejudice and extreme vulnerability,
Vytautas was "wounded" with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder which
dove-tailed with his Bi-Polar Disorder to create an intensifed "flight or fright" terror
that can threaten to capture or cripple him at any time.
Hence, yet another "imprisonment" that Vytautas has to bravely contend against.
Yet Vytautas personifies freedom, not slavery, in his integrity of character,
his compassion, and his artistic brilliance.
Bravery is defined by the willingness to proceed in the face of fear.
Perhaps freedom is defined, at one level, by the willingess to proceed in the face
of all the opposition of enslavement and captivity, from forces outside, inside, or both.
We are honored that the artist and writer, Vytautas Pliura,
counts himself among the members of the Lamp Art Project.
|
