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07/18/2005: "Searching for a way out"
10 July: I have been painting on two canvases that I had already started, making substantial alterations. One, showing a woman sleeping in an interior with a bunch of flowers, has become a young woman in front of a bar window. The other, representing a man watching, through a window, a woman absorbed in her own thoughts at a cafe table, has been radically simplified to gain expressive complexity. I removed the figure of the woman in order to leave the man observing as a central and mysterious image. In this way I have managed to depict something disturbing, no longer related to any particular event.
I4 July: This morning I went back to work on this painting. After defining the face and trying to outline the structure of the whole composition better, I decided to stop, because I seemed to be working too intellectually. I was trying to paint too well. I wasn't being helped by the inspiration that is essential in giving life to a painting. The second painting was going much better - "the woman in front of the bar window". I managed to find unexpected and pleasant touches, and I was enjoying myself. I felt that I was absorbed in the adventure of painting. When you find yourself entering this kind of world, you need to know how to distance yourself from everything around you. 
I wasn't able to continue with my work because Millo arrived - whom I had arranged to meet a few days before. I would certainly have enjoyed his visit, if it hadn't interrupted such a creative moment. When you are in a period of intensive work, you mustn't even arrange to meet people you normally want to see. They nearly always arrive at the wrong moment.
I5 July: Now I have been "rowing" inside this painting for five days, and it seems to have become a storm at sea. And I, torn between faith and dejection, have continued to insist in not allowing the boat to sink. I have resisted well beyond hope. When everything seemed to be lost, the sea unexpectedly turned calm again, and here I am, in front of this canvas that has perhaps been saved from shipwreck.
The days are rapidly passing, and I still can't leave this painting alone. I often seem to have found the solution that I have been looking for. I feel a moment of satisfaction, which unfortunately doesn't last for very long. Then all my doubts come back and I decide to cancel and redo a part, which then means that I am forced to alter something else, and so it goes on. It is nine in the morning. I have come down into the studio a little while ago and have already looked at the painting in question. I could leave it alone, at least for today, and go on to paint something else. This would be a wise thing to do. But can someone who has always taken the risks that experimentation requires, ever behave wisely?
I6 July: This has been a rather uncreative day. Perhaps I am tired. For whatever reason, I haven't managed to produce anything and I have been forced to put off the con clusion (at least, I hope this is the case) of this wretched painting, in which my work for my next exhibition has got stranded, for yet another day. Time is not getting any longer, and all the time that I am spending on this painting will not be available for finishing the others. Since I realise that completing this painting has become the gate through which I must pass in order to go on my way, I simply have to hope that I will find a road that will be easier to follow beyond the gate. On other occasions this has been the case - as if the labour of giving birth to this creation, in which so much thought and energy is consumed, in which moments of exaltation are followed by moments of unease, leaves the artist with unexpected enrichment.
I7 July: Today is time for resting and thinking about my canvasses. A painting is created from all those that you have painted previously, and from what you have already learned about painting; but, above all, it is created from a wish to explore the world, to discover what continues to escape you.But as I wrote before both on this blog and elsewhere, I have the impression of floating on a wave that seems to be taking me towards the shore, but then takes me back towards a vortex in which I could drown.In this state of mind it is easier to capture the contradictory nature of existence, rather than acquire the insight and discipline of a historian. Perhaps we are lost in a labyrinth whose exit is always on the other side, whatever point we find ourselves in. I believe there is a time when painting could represent the drama of a world trapped in a labyrinth and hopelessly searching for a way out. Perhaps this is another kind of history: that of the labyrinth we have ended up in.
Alberto Sughi Rome July 2005
For more info on Alberto Sughi see. www.albertosughi.com
