SHORT ESSAY ON THE PAINTING OF ODETTE FARRELL

The bodies and the faces that Odette Farrell paints are dipped (or suspended) in a kind of atmosphere where references lack completely, and therefore certainties from space and time. They are not-places, so in order to get oriented it is useless as well as impossible to use co-ordinates. The dimension in which the Farrell moves is similar to that previous one to the Big-Bang, in which time and space already existed, but they were latent, and yet unexpressed.

The represented shapes are dissolved shapes, lacking in contours and they assert themselves as entity in grace of their own existence and not of their being represented.

The minimal perspective search is completely absent because the same premises for its possibility lack to exist.

The pictures of Farrell therefore do not testify a certain search of order in the chaos of the existence; they rather testify to inquire in the very origin of the existence. It is not a search of theological type and, although the way to proceed is not speculative, it is even distant from the dreamlike contemplation, as the total absence of symbolism shows.

The renunciation from Farrell to space-time connotations is not only a pure aesthetic choice, at least not at the minor meant of this term, but it is the consequence of her actual world vision and from the distance taken away from the comfortable relativism of our time, that pulling down some barriers and abolishing some limits, has raised many others which are as well not less easy to cross.
The certainties spread by the markets expansion and the conviction that everyone would have enjoyed the riches produced from it has also shown the precariousness and the unbearable of this race. The harmony between folks has not replaced discord and abolished conflicts; at the same time the individual is not more in peace with himself: it is restless and uncertain.
In this world that tries to be persuasive and optimistic, death, pain and loneliness are as active as never before. That this happens while we have acquaintance of knowledge and riches that were never enjoyed by humanity, can only throw shadows on the same nature of human being.

Here therefore Farrell decides to go out from the course of events, she puts herself to the margins and grabs the only raft of salvation that appears to her reliable: art. This action does not represent a romantic stamp escape, on the contrary it is a total immersion in the magma that in this precise historical moment is boiling under the crust and it is coming out in part.

One of the more recognizable colors and mainly used by Farrell is the one of eroticism, a pure not polluted one.
It is in eroticism where Farrell sees the force (between those of material nature) that is able not only to assure the continuity of life, but also its fullness.
The faces that the artist often paints carry a lot the signs of pain and anguish and very rarely they seem to find quiet; in the same way the bodies often appear contracted. This demonstrates that it is not enough to cut oneself off in one dimension outside from time in order to find peace: our pains, our fears, our nightmares will follow us even there.
What is necessary to do is to go back in that prime dimension and this recovery operation demands immense hard work and the constant control of the one just operated.
The logical, rational and technological man of our time has understood the limits of his own logic, of his own rationality and of his own ability to dominate the world. He must melt down again his own relationship with life: this is what Odette Farrell tries to say with her colors. 

I suggest the reading of the essay by Achille Bonito Oliva dedicated to Egon Schiele, perhaps the artist who more than every other has inspired Odette Farrell.