Nathalie Sécardin

The "on" in paintings
The French pronoun "on" has several meanings. "On" can be synonymous to "we", or to "one".
It can also be used to express the lack of embodied or known subject.
Metaphorically, with “on”, I am weaving a living, anonymous, textured, colourful web, made living by a profusion of people whose every identity expresses singularity.
It’s obviously a paradox: can one “on” express an identity?
If in the shared world, each individual is looking to “exist”, in order to assert their subjectivity, in the name of what is essential to them: the “ego” (as would psychiatrists call it, or the “self” to Paul Ricœur). It wouldn’t come to anyone to identify to a “on”, to claim their personality, when it is more spontaneous to say “I”.
However, behind “I” lies a metaphysical pitfall, the one from Descartes’ “I think, therefore I am” (the cogito). The expression seems to justify the individual subject “I”, in the sense of my individuality, when it simply says that, universally, thought is the peculiarity of “human identity”.
Right, but what does it have to do with painting?
"On” are pictural entities in relief. From a plastic standpoint, the “on” stitch is fluid, curvy, it is a wave that absorbs its neighbour et meets the other. Creating lines of “on” reminds me of the garter stitch in knitting.
From a symbolic standpoint, I am looking to create a duality between the “I” and the “on”. The mere presence of “on” stirs up an atmosphere of concern that gives depth to the texture. Even though we may not know what to think, and incidentally, there is no need to find an answer, it is simply there, hammering home some presence.
From a philosophic and literary standpoint, it leads to many stories, among others, the one of the disappearance of the subject, the death of the author that leads to the birth of the reader (Roland Barthes). As well as the interpretation of “on” as a linguistical symbol, in spoken language, literary and scientific discourse. A polyphonic “on” that holds all voices.
Circulating back to painting “on”. I organise them on the canvas: in piles (piled up), in assemblies, in swarms, in whirls, focusing on the movement of the letters that link one to the others. Each “on” is a beat, a vibration that echoes the previous one, and expresses an undetermined life in the sense of a “living being”. I’m inspired by the movement of cranes that flock in the sky to evoke the one of human peregrinations in existence.
“On”, depending on the circumstances, is an environment conducive to meditation, hypnotic trance, philosophic workroom, or a way of knitting life.















