Interview by Mathias Durand-Reynaldo
KAY QUATTROCCHI – THE WORLD HAS THE BEAUTY OF OUR WAY OF LOOKING UPON IT
Kay Quattrocchi is a very surprising artist, not to say…confusing! Her life is so intense that if a great writer one day decided to make a feature film, he would not know where to begin. The simplest way is to tell everything in a random manner. She will not be offended, since Kay’s spatiotemporal concepts are not necessarily in line with her contemporaries’.
Despite an Anglo-Saxon first name, an Italian name and a Greek mother, Kay is French but spent her childhood in Indochina. That being said, regardless of nationality, again, be aware that Kay is universal! As a teenager she was repatriated to France as war in Vietnam was raging. She adapted herself rather well to the country that was hers but that she did not know. By chance, she discovered at the same time, through her TV set and the Apollo experience, that technology does not serve only war, but also “human ingenuity”. This blend of materials, knowledge and intelligence gives rise to a technology that is not too far from military engineering, but at the service of peace, Kay understands it well. From there, failing to become an astronaut, she definitely knows that in her soul there is a hidden scientist!
Logically, one would think that her fate was determined. Instead, one could find her a few years later as a radio and TV announcer in Tahiti! This is probably what is most extraordinary in Kay Quattrocchi’s life. Chance, synchronicity, fate, everything is intertwined. To the point of believing that she has parallel lives. And even more! We will skip over her adolescence in Martinique, Morocco and Ceylon. We will also hardly mention her Catholic and secular schools, her daily visits to the Buddhist temple with her Indochinese nurse or her orthodox education on her mother’s side. It is impossible to tell everything! Kay is everywhere and nowhere at the same time, a citizen from here and elsewhere, with no country and no religion. She is a timeless and elusive woman. Yet she seems to carry a message. The answer must be sought on her art’s side. To understand her character’s complexity artistically, it should be said that she can paint everything! Her mastery and technical level are such that she can, according to her wishes, embrace any style. That being said, it is important to note that whatever the time or the manner that Kay will utilize at a time, her pictorial path is always oriented towards the same search: the “Self”. Wherever she goes, a pictorial aspect is always present. Kay knows where she is going. Art comes along and guides her through her travels. She had the chance to cross the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, sail on the mythical Ketch “Kriter” (and yet she is afraid of water!) She has also visited Paraguay and crossed paths again with Martinique and Congo. She escaped from death 3 times, and saw it from up close. She even had “modified states of consciousness experiences.” Another way to travel…
All these experiences internally and gradually enlightened her as can be seen in her paintings. In French Polynesia, in search of spirituality, she developed a special interest in “Marae”, God shrines, and she attended some rituals. She studied Tahitian traditions, tattoos and ornamentation. She took notes and made thousands of drawings. One of them even ended up being shown on a collectible stamp! She also began to exhibit. But as she did not feel custodian of this large heritage, she bequeathed all her work and returned to live in the Caribbean. In Martinique, she composed an anthem for 40 choir singers and drew the Marianne of overseas territories acquired by the President of the French Republic. She was even convened to the Elysee! In 1992, she finally discovered Saint Barths and permanently settled there.
Kay became an internationally recognized painter and started selling worldwide: Australia, the U.S., Germany, etc. Her lifestyle changed. She also opened one of the first galleries on the island: “L’Espace 21”. A precursor, she contacted the biggest auction houses in the world and brought works from Armand, Picasso, Leonor Fini and Caesar whom she personally met. She organized the first auction on the island! All her adventures and encounters have influenced and changed her way of painting. She has had several tendencies in a row: naive, pointillist, realistic or spiritual eventually leading to figure abstractive, carried by the look and vision of a great painter who believed in her: Michael Turovski. The latter explained that it is not necessary to seek to achieve perfection. This was a revelation to Kay. She realized that finally painting Love and Light and trying to get in touch with the Other is essential. Her goal became to paint without suffering or violence to find something broader and more encompassing, perceiving that truth is necessarily hidden somewhere in another dimension. Then she plunged into the work, sold her gallery and began an ambitious creative process.
Many other painters might have been lost at the time, in an obtuse or inclined spirit of mysticism. Not Kay! Information presented itself and consumed her. She tried to understand. Her answer was Cartesian! After an extraordinary meeting with astrophysicist Panayotis Charitos, she embarked on the study of the infinitely large and the infinitely small. In search of the Self through the information in Astrophysics: Bosons, Neutrinos, particles, black holes, gravitational waves, Planck wall, quantum mechanics, double causality, space and time, everything! She even met the CERN team, the giant Franco-Swiss particle accelerator. Its ultimate goal: To transcribe the movement of the elementary particles between inspiration and mathematics through its artistic achievements and to share the bond that exists between the Consciousness and the Universe in order to discover what unites us all = the Self. She files an international patent on her latest creation: “The Walls of Light”, which define the multi-dimensions of the Being within us. The multi-layers of this translucent wall are for her the stages of our consciousness in different but yet simultaneous dimensions.
She filed an international patent on her latest creation: “Walls of Light”, which define the multi dimensions of Being in us. She believes the multi layers of the translucent wall are stages of our consciousness in different yet simultaneous sizes. This “Wall of Light” was inaugurated on February 17, 2017 in front of the courtyard of the Saint Barth’ Collectivity Hall. As you can understand, Kay Quattrocchi is a truly UFO of painting, an alien. And if you want to have a good time for sure, look at her paintings, or even better! Go and look at her studio. But beware, her time scale is different from yours…
Mathias Durand-Reynaldo
Article originally published on Force One.
