This time my blog has been written without my actually meeting the artist. It’s all Covid’s fault, a long Covid that has prevented me from making an appointment with him. We have consequently decided to communicate by mail.

I came across Jean-Phillipe Kempf’s Ink Washes quite by accident while I was working on the Blog about Karin Dilthey. She happened to show me a book by her husband called “Nuances, transcender le reel” (Nuances, transcending reality) published in 2021 and containing a series of delicate and intriguing Ink Washes. As he and his wife live in Comps we agreed with Karin that I would visit them to make his acquaintance. However, time passed and….but the idea of making a Blog persisted and I am happy today that it has been realised even though it has been done in an unusual manner.

Below, please find extracts of my correspondence by mail with Jean Philippe Kempf.

Souspierre, 22.01.2024

Hello Jean-Philippe Kempf,

We have not yet met but I have been given to understand that you would agree for us to make a Blog together about your remarkable Ink Washes, like I have already done about the photographs of Karin Dilthey your wife. It would comprise something about your artistic path and how you came to make Ink Washes rather than another form of painting such as watercolours, oils or acrylics. Which painters inspire you and more generally what are the reasons that prompt you to make art, etc. Don’t hesitate to send me some of your thoughts and if not, hopefully I will soon get rid of my virus and look forward to a good face to face conversation with you.

Comps, 22.01.2024

“The idea of the art object is born out of mourning, out of dearth. As Braque once said, there is only one worthwhile thing in art: “that which cannot be explained”. This is the state of mind in which I create my Ink Washes. Their genesis comes from my eye’s need to pierce the blindness of a world. My mind yearns for this kind of strange distraction. When we meet, I’ll tell you all about my career and about the history of the Ink Washes that came after I had abandoned acrylic painting. I will tell you who are the painters who are close to me. And should there be a reason to engage in a creative activity, one at least is to have access to the the realm of the imagination and, as Mallarmé put it with an imperious necessity: “You will show by your work that you hold the universe at bay”. And in doing so, you immerse yourself in a balm that soothes the original state of mourning.”

Jean-Philippe Kempf

Souspierre, 23.01.2024

… “I’d like to come back to some of the thoughts contained in your e-mail of 22 January. I share them to a certain extent, especially the one expressed by Braque. The Mallarmé quotation you mention is generated by a lack, the mourning of an imperfect world that only the imagination can fill in. So, if I follow you, art is a form of compensation and of consolation. I tend to think, on the contrary that, while I am aware of the horrors the world we live in often holds in store for us, for me life is enough and art is an added value. When I’m moved by a work of art (very, very, very rarely by my own) I can sometimes experience moments of euphoria, but that being said, I agree with you it’s a “strange distraction…”.

… “When I read your e-mail, I noted that you had given up acrylic painting before devoting yourself to Ink Washes.

Why did you opt for a technique that is almost monochrome, fluid and transparent? How long have you been making Ink Washes? I understand that you like poetry and that you even write some. The comparison is sometimes made between oil paint (opaque, in your case acrylics) and watercolours (transparent, in your case inks) as between prose and poetry?

LF-F

Compts, 24.01.2024

My Background

I am a psychoanalyst, an author and a painter driven by a passion for theatre, the fine arts, literature and writing.

A past work of art (acrylic) by Jean-Philippe Kempf

The Ink Washes

Looking closely at the works of abstract painters like Helen Frankenthaler, Gao Xingjian, I learned to see and admire what they sought to represent beyond the splendour of figuration through which the sensuous softness of bare flesh sometimes plunged me into a flurry of deep-seated emotions. When I examined certain details, my eye sensed that the scale had been inverted so that the isolated part became a fragment of pure abstraction, the monumental quality of which led me to discover the existence of a much lighter presence, free from any form of figuration and making way for the harmony of rhythm.

Why Ink Washes Rather Than Another Technique

In the course of time, having dropped painting with acrylics, I came to realise that subtly mixed glazes with Chinese ink conjured up the subtle voluptuousness of suspended glimmers of sensitivity obtained by an unbelievable chemical process that gives birth to a fleeting moment of grace.

Painters Who Inspire Me

In the wake of the great figurative painters up to and including Edward Hopper, those artists who had agreed to give up every form of conceptualized art n favour of gestural painting where the sole act of painting counts through a hand-to-hand struggle with colour. I would mention here Sam Francis, Morris Louis, Helen Frankenthaler. The list is long.

Why Make Art

As stated by Gilles Deleuze: “There is a fundamental affinity between a work of art and an act of resistance.”