The number 40 is of great importance in Judeo-Christian tradition.
In biblical times, it was assumed that a person would die 40 days after he or she stopped breathing. The great Kings of Israel (Saul, David and Salomon) all reigned for forty years, Jonas preached for 40 days before Nineveh’s destruction, Noah’s great rains lasted 40 days and Moses received his call at 40 years of age and stayed in Sinai for 40 days. Furthermore, the chosen people lived in the desert for 40 years, while Jesus preached for 40 months, was tempted in the same desert by the devil for 40 days, disappeared from his burial place within 40 hours and appeared after resurrection, and before ascension, for exactly 40 days. And, obviously, forty days is the preparation time before Easter.
Forty was presumed to be THE number required for full transformation or renewal.
So is then forty a magical number? Probably not (I do not have the answer). It may probably be just a number, but it is definitely something else, and that is a message in a bottle.
It may simply mean “give it reasonable time”.
It may exemplify the fact that everything that is important, everything that requires a shift from an accepted paradigm, or a change of perspective, also requires a sensible time to mature and happen.

When I am “stuck” on an issue with my painting, I have two choices. Muddle through or give it time. And more often than not I will chose to give it time. Let it mature. And this means that I should “lay off”. Let it be for a while. Look at my troubled work in that typically artistic stance that is a mixture between despair and admiration for what we have done and may never repeat.

So my recommendation would be, let it be. Give yourself a period to rest. Forty minutes, forty hours or forty days. Fifty, fifteen, twenty or whatever you happen to feel is right, but give it time. And giving it time also means looking for silence, searching for a period to reason, contemplating, and extracting answers and further questions (after all, if anything , we have learned by now that one answer inexorably leads to a new uncertainty).
And letting it be also means going into your own desert, being tempted to do misguided stuff, and finally
returning from the horrowing experience free from pressures and erronous stimuli, feeling liberated and ready to resume the correct path.
Forty something, twenty something, sixty something…it doesn´t really matter. It is all probably all pretty much the same. It should simply be a great opportunity to stop, move away, think and maybe, just get it right.
Until the next time!
Ignacio

©2016 by Ignacio Alperin Bruvera
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Published by Ignacio Alperin Bruvera
ABOUT IGNACIO
Ignacio was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, grew up in Australia and lived in several countries around the globe until his return to his country of origin 15 years ago.
At a very young age and with the help of his mother, a talented artist herself, and his father, an engineer internationally renowned for his creativity and innovation, he took his first steps in the world of art. Surrounded by drawing tables, technical pens and architectural influences he began to create his own path.
His early influences were very eclectic and mature for his age. They included great masters like Rembrandt, Monet, Van Gogh and Picasso, as well as modern masters like Kandinsky, Pollock, de Kooning and Rauschenberg. Drawing, painting, and a great deal of reading took an important place in his life.
During his early 20s he develops a love affair with jazz, becoming an avid follower of the local Australian jazz scene and as a result, his painting begins to show signs of this inspiration. Complex rhythms, intertwining melodies, and a great deal of improvisational skills are developed in his art.
That slow and jazzy pace also helped him mature his own approaches and techniques while freeing himself from classical ties, finding stimulus in unusual places and developing a unique and sensitive voice.
Added to that, his artistically applied synesthesia –condition which he shares with Kandinsky-, adds to his work an unusual share of musicality and innovation. The artist admits the complexity of combining his artistic imprint with the possibilities this "gift" generates while always underlining that it is a constant exploration, full of achievements as well as challenges.
The result is a fusion that explores the limits of colors and shapes within a marked abstraction. An expressive path without reservations strongly anchored on his individuality and unique experience.
This exploration has not only been applied to his painting. He has also pursued his vision into other forms of artistic expression, including smaller architectural and design projects, and graphic design assignments applied to advertising and marketing.
VISUAL JAZZ
IGNACIO ALPERÍN BRUVERA
The works presented in his Blog are a fraction of the main series developed by the artist and which has been travelling around different cities around the world since 2010. The artist’s "Visual Jazz Tour" encompasses works aided by his synesthesia and based on a visual interpretation of melodies, mainly from traditional and avant-garde jazz, soul, Motown and the American songbook, expressed in shapes and colors.
Fascinated by this musical genre, Alperín has created his own visual language through the same methods of inventiveness and spontaneity as musicians. We find in his paintings spectacular spiral lines and longitudinal strokes which glide through the canvas, outlined by an energetic use of the primary palette, extracting from these colors unthought-of shades and gradations that have become a signature and a characteristic of his bold and powerful style.
In this way he has built its own movement filled language to communicate and engage in a dialogue with the public; mostly divorced from figurative representation, he constructs a visceral abstraction that stimulates the imagination and turn on the viewers’ inner sensations.
Ñ magazine (South America´s largest selling arts and culture magazine), in its issue of September 11, 2010, under the title "IGNACIO ALPERIN in NEW YORK – an Argentine visual Jazz show" went further than that, drawing a parallel between the love of jazz from the great Argentine writer Julio Cortazar and his incorporation of this musical form into literature, with the work of Alperín and his intention to assimilate this same musical form, this time in the realm of visual art.
Many subsequent articles in La Nación and Clarin newspapers (Argentina´s best- selling newspapers), as well as specialized magazines such as the above mentioned Ñ, ADN and Maleva Mag –just to mention a few - have also constantly highlighted his originality and constant growth.
The artist has conceptualized his art in a term that expresses the musicality of his work together with the movement that he seeks to impose on it.
The viewers are thus encouraged to become emotionally involved, transcending everyday reality in a process without space, age or time, towards a more universal, melodic and harmonious view of everything that surrounds them.
The work of Alperín has movement, rhythm, coolness and a degree of visual improvisation that is meant to hide a very well studied score. The result is constant dynamism and exceptional use of color in a never ending search for beats and counterpoints.
This synthesis of Art and music, or "Visual Jazz" as an American journalist baptized it a few years ago, it is almost a trademark of Alperin´s work with a strong track record and exhibitions in New York, Miami, London, Melbourne, Zurich, Lisbon and in Argentina.
Currently, the artist discloses the development of his work and research, and how it applies to corporate and professionally applied creativity in academia, as professor of Creativity and Innovation at the Universidad Católica Argentina (The Argentine National Catholic University in Buenos Aires), and gives seminars on the subject in the context of workshops and events for individuals, companies and artists both in Spanish and English. View all posts by Ignacio Alperin Bruvera
Reblogged this on THE ART OF THINKING OUT LOUD (Ignacio Alperin´s Blog).