Jean McEwen paid particular attention to the titles of his painting series. His works thus become chapters in a vast pictorial poem: Miroir sans image, inspired by Louis Aragon; Compagnons de silence, a reference to Paul Valéry; and Das Lied von der Erde, after Gustav Mahler’s celebrated song cycle. Each title contributes to the same quest for harmony between painting and poetry.

In Miroir sans image no. 10, the surface of the painting, despite its brilliance, refuses all transparency. The dense opacity of the material contradicts the reflective qualities of a mirror. As art historian Constance Naubert-Riser notes, this is “a painting that reflects nothing from the outside, a painting that is nothing but painting itself—colors, iridescences, stratifications.”

This work eloquently embodies the tension at the heart of McEwen’s practice: to transform light and color into an inner experience. It reveals that essential duality in his art, a search for intimate luminosity born from the very density of the pictorial matter. Through a subtle play of transparency and opacity, McEwen turns color into pure sensation. Here, the red, vibrant and alive, seems to ignite from within, revealing beneath its layered surface the vital pulse of the painting itself.