TROY HENRIKSEN

I first discovered Arthur Rimbaud or he first discovered me in 97-98, for he is much alive today, just read his poetry. I was in a café in Boston where I was showing my paintings. There was a magazine that had a picture of him in it, I was shocked to see a picture of myself staring at me from another century, I ripped the picture out and put it on my pocket and felt a new found freedom of myself, I then began reading about him and his work and his energy invested me even more. I learned of his theory of disorientating the senses with huge quantities of alcohol and drugs. I was relieved to learn this for I was having great difficulties stopping the process, but now having knowledge of “my past life”, I no longer needed to continue the cycle and repeat the same mistakes. The job was done, my senses were disorientated enough, my creative energy was on fire. I was painting, drawing, writing, making music. No borders, boundaries or limits, at home on this planet, free in this world, as long as I’m under a blue sky I’m abright, this is how I feel, me and Arthur are one, we are one in fact, one with everything. Now whether I am Arthur or Troy makes no difference, they’re just names that are subjective to any language of culture, but can give us clues as to who we are, and have significant and powerful meaning put upon our lives, but that is another study.
So free in this world I share the same soul as Arthur, “we are all one” it is a collective creative soul family.

Back in Boston around the time of the discovery, I was asked to leave the building I was living in; I was not “politically correct”. So now I was homeless, but it didn’t matter, anyway I was at “home in this world”. A friend of mine was getting married in France, so I decided to go to her wedding. So I cashed in a life policy, which was fitting because an old part of me had died and a new self was born. Now I had enough money to go to Paris to see where I used to live.
As soon as I came to “Saint-Sulpice” I found a copy of “illuminations” on the cabled stone, I opened it up and someone had written “on your journey do what you have to, to survive”. I knew then I was on the right path. My money soon ran out and I needed a place to sleep. While washing my clothes I met a young Italian girl who was watching an apartment for a friend, she offered that I stay with her. It was 10 rue de Buci, Arthur had lived here too, as a guest of the poet Banville, but was asked to leave for not being “politically correct”. To stay here, I had to sneak in and out, not to be seen by the guardian. My Italian friend had strict order to not have any male guests. I was soon discovered by the guardian and was immediately told to never come back to the building. So I found another place, and continued drawing until I could find a place to paint. I soon met a young German boy named Matao, he had an extra room that I could use as an “atelier”, in exchange for a painting for rent. It was at 10 rue de Buci, great! I was back at 10 rue de Buci and the guardian couldn’t say anything about it. For the next two years or so, I was able to make hundreds of paintings, and to do my language colour studies. In this period I was to meet my Delphine, the woman I live with and have a child with, a great little boy named Victor, for Victory.

I was also aware of the fact that Arthur had lost a foot in North Africa, I had “disorientated” my senses for a number of days in Paris and fell off the metro platform at Saint-Michel. I damaged my right knee, putting three holes in it. I then went to Tunisia to rest and my foot became very infected. I was admitted into the hospital. I stayed there for three days and my foot became swollen and infected. They saved my foot, I didn’t have to lose it in this time. I confronted the dark side and passed. This is a part of my journey into reincarnation, I believe the soul is shared collectively, to one degree or another, and that it travels as a collective family. I now see myself in many forms, times, places. We are everywhere, at all times, at once, we are one.

Troy Henrisken,
(April 2006).

Troy’s paintings immediately enthral the one who is looking at them; the one Troy speaks to with a friendly genius: “the other one”. His paintings are first obvious and simple, “in collusion”. They are also rich of their sophistication: between a figuration in which the sometimes over-simplified shapes remind Outsider Art or expressionism, and an abstraction controlled by a fine-tuned distribution of the colours on the whole canvas. The colours that are counterbalanced, supported by the weight of the words, the letters, the signs that Troy writes in a decorative hand in the foreground of the painting. The backgrounds are often covered with pages of worldwide newspapers. It is as if the hustle and bustle of the world were revived by the sudden appearance of those snippets of sense, of aphorisms, of puns, that are painted in polychromy. Features, compositions, colours, signs... that tell about present and past facts, about myths and reality, about phantasms and dreams, about nature and humanity... Paintings that hint at breaking news and at life with its joys, its pains, its projects, its diversity and its dreams. Troy’s works of art are a florid anthology of shapes and colours exposed to the enigma of life going by. Troy’s works of art have found the souls for which they were designed, since that magical day of 1999 when Troy Henriksen first stepped into the Galerie W. Since he arrived to Paris, his life inspired him more than eight hundred paintings. Each one is a memory for him, for me, for those who live the gallery, for those who live with it every day. Everyone has their personal story, their force, and their destiny.

Troy Henriksen was born in the city of Moby Dick, New Bedford. He became a fisherman before he tried his luck at road-tripping. His father, a former student from the Art School, set up his own fishing company very soon. Just like his Norwegian ancestors, Troy would be a sailor, the one who would bring the trawler safe back to the harbour, overcoming the storm. In Paris, he more than once used the papers - sent by his father and that served for drawing the fishing routes - as a support for creation and as a last “transfert-surface”. The latitude and longitude of Cape Cod spring up here and there in his paintings. Shapes are timeless words, the interpretation and reading of which depend on the combination and on the chance governing the sizes of the paintings, the mood and secret order of Troy. In front of these works of art, the senses that are on the look-out are the same as when reading. One can spend hours in front of a poem-painting by Troy and have the feeling to be diving into a book. The poet-painter appears obviously. When I see Troy’s work and the non-boundary between words and features, features and drawings, it reminds me of the catalogue by Bernard Blistène, of its title, Poésure et Peintrie (“Poeting and Paintry”). It is even more relevant than before: aren’t the boundaries between those two forms of art disappearing?

Eric Landau,
The investigator of the Galerie W.