Alpha & Omega
For more than fifty years one idea has tormented me, has haunted my dreams and has set me aflame. Like the ceaseless waves of the seas and the oceans eating into the shore, it has sculpted in my soul deep convictions leading to a creation of another order – the creation, or rather re-creation, of the whole history of humanity under all its aspects, social, religious, artistic, historical, technical, poetic, and humanist and all else.
The Supreme Creator and any creator, both perform the same great act, that of creation. It has also been my desire to lay stress on the feminine role, that of the woman who is goddess, poet, fairy and charmer, the woman who is motherhood, grace, love, selfless generosity and all goodness, the woman who is mystery, beauty, heroine, courage…, virtue, wisdom and inspiration.
The Apologia of Womanhood, a work which may cover more than 300 or 400 metres square.
What title may we give this project?
A New Reading of Holy Scripture?
The History of Humanity? …of Existence?
I am achieving a project of plastic art, not of literature.
– Plastic Forms of an Existence?
– The Colours and Outlines of a Legend?
I am still feeling my way towards finding two or three words that may stand for a hundred or more canvases.
Alpha and Omega?
Who has seen the beginning and who will see the end?
The dominating event, the culminating point, will be Golgotha.
– The dominating event?
– Legendary plastic visions?
– Forms and humanism?
– Forms and legends?
Finally, the conception saw the light of day in the year 2003.
Research, hundreds of outlines, sketches, drawings, geometrical tracings and forms, lines, constructions and compositions!
When one embarks on such a task there is no more time for sleep!
Every three canvases form one composition, a unity.
The first canvas opens with an incomparable feminine presence, the Holy Virgin.
During these last days of February 2004, I have just finished some fifty square metres, but the work before me is very hard and will take up much time. It supposes a firm resolve, much love, much will-power, and of course a fund of artistic ability.
Joseph Matar
