Joma Sipe
( A r t e S i m b o l i s t a e V i s i o n á r i a l S y m b o l i s t a n d V i s i o n a r y A r t )
O Fogo da minha Alma arderá para sempre l My Soul´s Fire will burn forever
Joma Sipe
Describing The Work:
I had no specific training in arts in general. I had Arts in Portuguese school years that were basically about visual experiences and drawing and not the training in arts with some specific school. I am a civil engineer in my “working hours” during a part of my day, working with Autocad (computer assisted drawing program), drawing and projecting new houses and roads projects. This is my basic formation, civil engineer. I think this helped me with the geometrical and accurate form of drawing, trying to be as “perfect” as I can with the lines. I have been essentially self-educated in the drawing process and art in generally. I was always interested in art since very earlier years, drawing and painting as a hobby. My interest in art is related with subjects like Symbolism, and the Symbolist Movement of late XIX century. I am also very interested in the Pré-Raphaelite Movement, and English and French Symbolist painters like Burne-Jones, Simeon Solomon, William Blake, Walter Crane, Watts, Gustave Moreau, the Belgian painter Jean Delville, Fernand Khnopff, Arnold Bocklin, among many others.
In the XX century specially the artists Johfra Bosschart and Diana Vandenberg.
My interest is about the subjects that they used on the paintings, specially the Mythology subjects and the Visionary landscapes that are part of their work. I feel in my paintings something about that Visionary style. It is something more related with the energy that is felt in visualizing this paintings and not the style itself, because my geometric paintings are not in style related with theirs, not even the materials used in both works.
I started by drawing and painting the forms that can be seen in the period 2000-2005, having as inspiration esoteric and mythological subjects, and drawing the bodily forms as best as I knew in my self-trained way.
Since late 2004 my inspiration changed, because the inner changes in my life. That made me change the way that I understood the manner that I was using to express myself and my inner “visions”. And I started to paint the oils and the acrylics canvas but inserting now some geometrical theme, like on this 2004/2005 paintings:
These where becoming part of my changing period. The colors where becoming darker and the thin lines with silver where introduced, among the oils and the acrylics colored paintings.
In 2006 I started with my first completely geometrical work, “The Key of Life”:
And then become working with this style since then.
I receive also inspiration from my own poetry and write poetry for the paintings, but I also have lots of inspiration especially from esoterical and mystical themes, as present in Theosophy (especially Blavatsky writings), Kabalah, Hindu culture, Sacred Mandalas, Zodiac, Constellations, “A Course In Miracles”, and so many many others. I have been in several esoteric schools and attended many conferences about Theosophy. I also read a lot in this kind of subjects.
It works this way. I use different supports to work. I usually use cotton based canvas, high quality black paper and card. I usually paint the white canvas with black acrylic based paint so that I can achieve the correct support. Usually the paper and the card are originally black, so I use it like it is. I work different ways, sometimes I draw intuitively using silver or gold based ink pens, very thin, like 0,5mm, directly on the black canvas or paper.
Other times I use the computer to help me drawing the symmetrical forms, I print them, and then transfer it to the support using a white chemical transfer paper. Then I trace again above this lines using the silver or gold pens.
To draw I use the compass, rules and triangles and the silver or gold very thin pens that I mention earlier:
When I finish the drawings or paintings with the pens I then place the crystals, using special glue, in the intersection points of the lines and geometrical forms. I do this intuitively and use as many as I can and “feel” that should be placed in some specific intersection. The crystals usually are white/transparent or aurora boreal crystals (all colors), in different shapes and sizes. The simple white crystals reflect only the white/transparent light, the aurora boreal crystals reflects every light color that exists. I call them “aurora boreal” because of the Trade Mark that commercializes them, that is Swarovski.
The light changes reflect changes in the refraction and reflex of light in the art work. Usually they become “illuminated” by light and changes in lots of different ways as the different angles that light shines in them. It is a wonderful spectacle to see, when there are a lot of different lights shining on them from different angles. Then the major work is done. I worked only with this process until 2010.
Original works on an exhibition:
The “reflexion/refraction” of light by the crystals:
In 2010 I tried something different and started working on other idea.
Since the “original” paintings are all black, becoming “colored” only when the light shines on them, why not try to “bring” the light to the paintings?
I then had the idea of adding colored computer effects to the Photographs of the paintings.
These lightning effects are not on the “original” art works, they can be achieved only on the photographs of the “original” works. So really they don´t actually exists, they can only be obtained by printing a poster or used on a book or magazine.
This works are the ones my Quest Book, “Soul of Light: Works of Illumination”, is about. All the images are photographs of the “original” works on the black canvas or paper, silver or gold pens and crystals, using colored computer light effects that give them the idea of light that shines in different ethereal ways and colors:
I have no category to “insert” my work. It can be called “visionary”, “symbolic”, “geometrical”, “mystical”, etc.
It is all that, but I feel it is beyond that. For me it captures the essence of the human soul, the “anima” of the individual, and reflects somehow the inner structure of the universe inside each human being.
Some works that I do represent, in my way of thinking and interpreting them, the real structure of the energy that supports the universe, that’s how I represent It. I call It Energy, Light or Love.
I make with all the geometrical patterns and drawings a kind of a inner code, that can only be understood by the ones that are connected with it and remember it.