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Of Middlemen, in-between’s and what-ifs – The paintings of Geraldine Zinat -

 

Alec Von Bargen

 

For those of us fortunate enough to have shared time with Geraldine Zinat, it is clear from the first instant you meet her that she not only converses with her own reflection, but she also demands responses from that woman entrapped in the silver. She manages this without the need of something as mundane as a mirror placed before her. Everything Zinat does is from the gut. There is no middleman, no in-between, no ‘what ifs’. She pulls magnificence from the darkest crevices of her inner-linings and in the most dauntingly generous of manners, lays it out for us to appreciate. She herself is her creator, her muse, her inspiration. While most artists spend years learning skills in order to perfect their technique, working their technique in order to create a unique style, creating a unique style in order to have a career, Zinat just dances. She’ll dance to the sound of her own heartbeat while registering the voices from within and then, without censor, will begin to create. She is truly one-of-a-kind; a multi-disciplinary monster with the talent to illuminate even the darkest of fairy tales.

The women represented in her paintings, embellished and adorned by the French blood racing through Zinat’s veins, are an extension of the artist herself, each an alternate layer of Zinat’s reflection in that mirror. They are the different facets of this woman who with the ease of a curious dragonfly hovers effortlessly between her existence as a performer, a singer, a writer and a visual artist... tasting success in all. Her brushstrokes are a testament of this complexity of character and the choice of

materials upon which she gives life to her proud demoiselles, are as varied as the personalities inhabiting the mind of this well-travelled and knowledgeable creator.

Zinat invokes imagery of vaudeville and the quasi naïve gaiety of life at the beginning of the 1900’s. As in the theatre, the spectacle commences with Zinat cunningly pulling back the curtains to reveal the intimate boudoirs of her women, moments of self-discovery, which at times almost feel staged, posed, prepared solely for us. We are the voyeurs and these women know they are being watched... their audacity lies in the ability to stare back without the faintest hint of disdain. The vibrant colours and continuous wave of patterns and textures aid in immersing us further into the dimensions of each one of these larger-than-life personas, and yet the more we grow familiar with the person before us, the more she becomes unobtainable and her gaze distant. Not everything is as it would seem and not all of the women dance so freely as we initially supposed. It is here where Zinat’s bravura lies.

Virginia Woolf once said that her own brain was the most “unaccountable of machinery – always buzzing, humming, soaring, roaring, diving, and then buried in mud.” Zinat knows better than to simply trust everything she sees in the mirror. She too acknowledges out-loud the shortcomings of her emotional reflection. She is wise enough not to take everything at face value and humble enough to let fear, doubt, solitude and emptiness strengthen the character of each of her women. They are not perfect. The audacity of the tones surrounding them does not fully reflect the turmoil within... it complements, it’s distracts, disguises, but these women are not as superficial as we were upon first seeing them. They demand focus, intent, commitment. Zinat’s brain too buzzes, hums, soars, roars, dives and then becomes utterly buried in mud, but in contrast to Ms. Woolf, Zinat does not stop to question why, nor does she doubt what her passion is for.

To ask why would be to doubt and Zinat does not doubt. With her there is no middleman, no in-between and no ‘what ifs’. She is the fire that inhabits the characters she paints. She is the pain her women are so steadfast to disguise. She is the passion Virginia Woolf so desperately needed to justify.

 

 

Alec Von Bargen Visual Artist - Actor

Visual Advisor – Venice Film Festival’s Biennale College – Cinema Director Krema Kolletiva

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