Berenice

"Berenice", my piece for the London Miles 'Literal Eyes' show, inspired by the novel "Berenice" from Edgar Allan Poe.
(Oil on canvas - 24"X16" )

I discovered Edgar Allan Poe at the age of 13, thanks to my French teacher.
I immediately felt in love with "the extraordinary tales". I loved everything about it, the feelings, the dark and neurotic mood...
Poe is a great artist, by far my favorite writer, I have read all of his books and never get bored.
Thanks to him i get interested by the "Romantic" movement in America and Europe, and I discovered by the way great writers and artists like Baudelaire, Victor Hugo ...
Poe was, i think, a revelation, he helped me to devellop my current style. He is one of my everyday life's inspiration. He gave me a taste for the darkness, the unreal, the morbid and the sublime...

If I chose to recreate "Berenice" for this exhibition, it is first because this novel is one of the first i had the chance to read, and then it is, in my opinion, one of the strongest novel Poe ever Wrote!
Poe express through this strory a lot of feelings, he speaks in his own way of madness, love, life and death, old age, sickness. It is dark, beautiful, terrible, and full of symbolism.
The main subject of this novel is the tooth: Teeth are fascinating, they evoke so much in our everyday life, in the history and religion. Teeth are a symbol of life, of good health, of beauty.
If you lose your teeth, as it is said in the novel, it is then a symbol of death, old age, loss of innocence, sickness, loss of feminity, fear.
Working on such an interesting and symbolic subject was more than great for me, it couldn't be more perfect for my morbid and psychotic style.