Nausea

2007: Acrylic on canvas, 120cm x 40cm

John-Paul Sartre - Nausea

Sartre's text provides some particular philosophical issues if one attempts to fix the meaning of his writing in paint. The main protagonist Antoine Roquentin frequently comes face to face with the problem of his own existence, prompting him to describe objects as 'not black' or 'not red' and so on. I tend to think that the word 'not' does not negate the colour word sufficiently for it to be omitted. And in fact, the very negation of the colour brings it to existence in the mind... paradoxically. I have an ambivalent relationship to Sartre's ideas, some of which inform the basis of the construction of these paintings (but which are more than likely erroneous). Nausea is a fantastic book, however, and there can not be many equal descriptions of what a realisation of the very fact of existence might do to one if you think too much about it.

Notes on the text of the book