Jean-François Pereña

Jewellery creator

"Disorder, jumbled heaps, drawings piled on top of each other, ideas and feelings in profusion. A vast well where the feelings of today mingle with distant memories of a long-lost childhood.

I'm four years old, somewhere in Castille, and the storm is only just over; I can smell the strong earthy smell on the sodden red soil. It makes me feel bigger than I am, much bigger... I breathe in deeply and feel I could fly away. What I'm inhaling is self-confidence, faith in my inner desire to make things and my ability to do it one day. The breath I've just taken in inspiration for my own future.

That early emotion enabled me to reach all the others lying dormant within me. A simple swaying movement of the hips can move me infinitely. Or a brisk movement of a woman's hair, its ever-changing shape and form, the reflections and rhythms of the water in a gushing stream, its pools, its flow.

This is my spiritual nourishment, and I store it inside me like a reservoir of energy that will feed the special process where feelings and emotion become form - forms that touch and move me, speak to me, and ultimately take me out of my inner turmoil.

This explains why I'm always looking for new surprises, things that will provoke new sensations, doubts, questions, reactions of wonder in me. A way of breathing and feeling that will enable me to construct, not only my creations, but myself too.

So I do some sketches to try and capture that fleeting emotion, the excitement of the moment. A few strokes to convey the main idea, imprint the basic structure on my memory. Then I forget it along with all the others in the pile. I leave it to filter through my mind. A few days - or maybe even weeks - later, I immerse myself in it again. Is that strong feeling I had at the time still there, has it resisted the ravages of time? Is it really something new, original? I take up again and again, I separate out, make choices, try and bring whatever it was that originally flooded my senses so playfully, under control. I'm constantly trying to make out the main features that come back to the fore time and time again. I focus on sharpness of vision at this point, density, clarity, the essence of a piece.

Once the idea seems to have taken shape, I do a new drawing to give it volume and perspective. I make notes. I try and bring the lights and colours into reality. I put leaves on the tree and place some apples underneath it. I'm working on the invisible part, what will only be revealed by touch and caress; at this point I'm turned towards the subconscious of the person who'll bring this object into his emotional life.

I try and create a balance between forms, and an even distribution of weight so that the piece will follow the lines of the body closely and harmoniously, even disappear or become unobtrusive. I'm constantly aware of its potential sensuality. I enjoy exploring this relationship between the body and the piece that becomes its second skin.

I've chosen the leather and the skin is still worrying me. I find leather lends itself to infinite possibilities; it can sheathe something or be sculpted, and it's resistant too. Over the years, a whole host of other materials have been added to my artist's palette - materials from the animal, vegetable and mineral worlds, metals, acrylics, composite materials; I incorporate them all into my "paintings". They are the substance of my creation.

What lies ahead now is sheer struggleI'll be wrestling with the material and with myself, sometimes even against myself. Like a painter, I'll be hunting for a particular blue, the one I can see in my mind's eye, the one I know carries within it that inexpressible feeling I'm after. Is it lapis lazuli, or a slice of mother-of-pearl? What if I take some painted maple wood or this bluish bone? Some shagreen perhaps ? Or a butterfly's wing protected by some crystal? What about some aluminium? What am I really looking for in fact ? A warm blue or an icy cold one? Or a material I haven't yet acquired and will have to hunt out so as to get exactly the right match between my vision and reality. In any case whatever material is next to it will change it radically, it'll either light it up or dull it down. I'm master of this game... But colour is not the only concern here; rough surfaces will catch the light, polished surfaces will invite the gesture of caress, optical illusions have a role to play there's my search for a balance between asymmetrical geometric shapes, transparencies such as tortoiseshell over gold, a play of reflections to hold the onlooker's gaze and distract it from an angular collarbone. Or I may want to give the impression of a hollow in a frontal form, introduce some invisible geometry, a set of planes, make different temperatures apparent.

How do I do it? By sheathing, gluing, replacing part of the leather with another material, setting, pegging into place. The artist in me gives expression to his creativity through inventive techniques. Then I have to find a means of preventing damage by rain or perfume, give my piece a certain mobility so it will sit firmly on the body and move with it.

This passage from idea to realization is always difficult and often unsatisfying. But as the days pass and I dream of my creation at night, this work becomes something other than mere creation - it is the springboard of my emotions, it enters my very guts, harbours my violence, the violence of its creator, swallows all my inhibitions, reflects my most intimate dreams, allows spirals of my subconscious to pierce through. The creation is creating me, providing my own inner harmony and balance.

There remains the person who will wear the piece, adopt it as his own and carry the message of so many of my desires. There has to be a conversation between the wearer and the piece so that they become close to each other, move inside each other's worlds, create their own intimacy. At this precise moment - and only then - does the piece become a fine piece of JEWELLERY."

Jean-François Pereña