malvina - Bibliographie oeuvres littéraires sur les fonds sous-marins

My diving stories

Telepathic communication with a grouper fish.

" - Diving is dreaming with your body,
painting under the water
is grasping this dazzling, palpable dream."

In 1992, I discovered underwater diving, and since then I have known why I make paintings. It was the discovery of another world, and it came as a great shock, like when you are a child and you realise the existence of death, love, sexuality and all the secrets that make the world go round. The sea is the cradle of my dreams, the matrix in which I regenerate myself, constantly die and am reborn. One of my most wonderful stories was a forty-five-minute encounter with a grouper fish. This happened in the Port-Cros National Park off the French Riviera, in 1995. I had only been painting underwater for two years and was still unfamiliar with the underwater life. Philippe Robert asked me one day to go and make a portrait of a grouper fish at la Gabinière, little more than a large rock in the sea, within a mile of the island. The idea of painting a fish in the sea sounded slightly crazy. "How do you expect me to find this fish?", I asked. I wasn't even sure what a grouper fish was. However, I decided to go. Yet, before I even reached the sandy seabed, there it was, as though expecting me, waiting like a wise old man in the depths of a forest! I thought: "Hey, wait a minute Malvina, grouper fish do not date human beings. I must be narcing! " Here I am, alone, enveloped in blue, I can hear my own breath escaping through the pressure reducing valve, my movements slowed by the thickness of the water. I'm at a depth of about fifty feet. I put my canvas on the sand. The grouper is less than six feet away and is giving me a long look. I am under its spell, but I steady my thoughts: "Get drawing. He's not going to hang around!" My fingers are shaking. If he goes, I'll have missed the shot. I have trouble constructing the drawing. I'm fascinated by my subject. Am I looking at him, or is he looking at me? I've never been looked at like this before, and when I search his eyes, I feel neither fear nor resistance. I know I mustn't get too close. He sets the distance. I obey. So he stays. He's understood why I'm here. I relax a little, but the doubt persists: how long is he going to sit for me? I'm beginning to feel okay about looking him in the eye. The portrait has just become a pretext. Something has started to happen between us. He's not a fish any more, and I'm not a human being. We are now just two entities. One from land. The other from the sea. I feel as though I'm being seen by someone whose thoughts I cannot even imagine. So, I get a bit bolder. I try to reach out and touch his soul, to get an insight into the mystery. I try to empathise, to see the world through his eyes. His vision is not binocular like ours. From time to time, the left eye, then the right eye, turn momentarily in the corners, to survey the environment, while the other stays peacefully set on me. For animals, vigilance is all. But why is he letting me do this? He hasn't moved for ten minutes. Holding the pose, only his thick lips parting at regular intervals to let in the water filtered by his gills. His fins draw ellipses in space in order to keep balance. His muscular mass remains still, yet I am aware that the slightest movement of his tail will propel him to a distance of several yards. I am starting to take my time and work on the decor. It is a rocky landscape awash with an opaque, cavernous light. Then, suddenly, he's off! It had to happen. The picture isn't finished, but I didn't expect to have it this good anyway… I finish sketching out the environment when… there he is again! He's hardly been away when there he is, back in exactly the same place, holding exactly the same pose. Is this possible? This is one amazing fish. Maybe this is his idea of a joke? "No, hold on! That's anthropomorphism: fish don't joke!" My conscience tells me to get real. Conscience is a barrier, a prison. We too live like prisoners, like goldfish in a bowl. We have invented prisons to shut away all kinds of things. Not just people or animals, but also emotions, desire, intuitions. Perhaps (who knows ?) our prescience too! Anyway, he's back again, so I go back to being a fish again. Like him, my body is floating horizontally and I'm levitating above the seabed. Like him, I'm looking at someone or something else in this mute dialogue. Like him, I'm curious to discover another form of life than mine. Sea creatures that do not yet fear us come to us spontaneously just to take a look. The journey is in this vision. Perhaps deliverance is to forget that we belong to the human kingdom, to look at nature but not as conquerors. Like me, this fish is a child of the world. I've been painting him for twenty-five minutes now. I perceive subtle shades of light on my retina. This is enchantment. The viscous, blue matter holds me in a spell, seems to flow through me. Am I about to dissolve like an aspirin? Once again, you leave. This time, however, I wait, thinking that you will return. And, sure enough, a moment later, there you are, in the same place taking up the same pose. You knock me out! I'm happy to be here. This is like a dream, far from the world as we know it. Everything is BLUE! Blue ochre, blue green, blue mauve, blue grey, an infinite spectrum of blue. Sometimes I find myself aware of my body, my legs. Tasting the weightlessness. I float and move effortlessly, and when I am immobile, just taking one breath is enough to lift me. My soul is as light as a breath when I dive into it. I try to compare the density of my body with that of the water. This is an incomparable feeling that I love. The grouper is still looking at me. How come he doesn't get bored? How many times has he done this? Stare someone out for forty-five minutes? I take the time to complete the picture. I've done what I came here to do. There's no need to hurry now. Suddenly, something totally unexpected happens. He leaves, but this time, he's not coming back. Or rather, he is: only this time he's doing things differently. Now, he's behind me, slightly above me, as though he wanted to look at my work over my shoulder! Now my heartbeat is up a gear. I turn. His peaceful, globular eye is on me, unconcerned at my surprise. I start drawing again, remembering the time when I was a child and my father tiptoed up behind me to watch me for minutes on end as I worked. I would hear his breathing at my back and when I felt that his presence was oppressing me, I would quietly complain. "Just do as though I wasn't' here", he would say. You bet Sure, you're not there! I can remember it now! Sometimes he would let out an exclamation, admiring my graphic performance. My pencil would fly across the paper like a bird. I was out of jail. Like a dancer, a fish, a tree or a cloud. I left my body behind to fly in the spheres of the spirit and the mind. Thoughts are light, our mind moves so much faster than our body. Meanwhile, the grouper is still there, behind me. His behaviour impresses me, but I pretend not to notice. After all, he is big! Then, I'm aware of a turbulence in the thickness of the water. The fish turns on itself, swims round the rock, and is back in position. My picture's done. I have 50 bars and can take my time, making a decompression stop at ten feet. My partner's waiting on the dinghy. I spotted him once or twice, discreet like a shadow, moving silently past as I got on with my drawing. I look at you again, but my vision has changed. You're no longer the same for me. You've taught me something I can't put a name on. Already, I'm feeling the consequences of this knew knowledge on my mind. I'm surfacing with a vision of plenitude. Adieu grouper . Thank you for offering me your innocent complicity.

I now see more clearly than this morning.

Malvina