Disappearance

huile sur toile, 100×100 cm

A painting is a surface for meditation. It seems to me that, unlike the mandala, which supports and channels meditation through abstraction toward unity (the mental clarity of pure presence beyond desire, the Nothingness of all things, all meanings), the painting invites meditation through the concretization of diversity (the forest being a paradigm) toward the experience of a purely sensory, ineffable unity where presence and absence merge, releasing desire.

A painting is to be looked at, felt, listened to, touched, tasted. René Daumal, a devoted reader of the Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita, wrote in Counter-Heaven: Non is my name, non non the name, non non the non. That is the mandala. For the painting, one would have to say: Yes is the ear, yes yes the ear, yes yes the yes.

The forest will outlive us.

Forêt

huile sur toile, 89×116 cm

Five against one is not a fair match. But the fox is clever.

 
The Dance of the Bats

huile sur toile, 100×100 cm

With the ongoing shift in our understanding of nature, prompted by the imminent threat of its sterilization and the growing awareness of the accelerated disappearance of many species, the symbolism traditionally attached to various animals in different cultures is gradually dissolving. Goya’s nightmare bats now protect us from the invasion of mosquitoes and other insects. On the lake in my village, as dusk falls, you can witness the bats leading the dance…

Being-in-the-world

huile sur toile 80×80 cm

How can we view “nature” without reducing it to something in front of us, an object ultimately at the subject’s disposal? How can we paint a landscape without making it the inert reference of a representation (whether it be impressionist, expressionist, or any other style)? I asked myself this question during my previous painting: on the banks of the Volp. To paint the landscape while being immersed in it, and not from the exteriority of a subject facing its object… With this painting, the question becomes: how to paint the living? To paint the living without reducing it to a mere “being,” a thing… Take, for example, a dove. Existential philosophy considers that only humans are beings-in-the-world. Alone in the midst of entities that supposedly do not have a world of their own. But if no living being is separable from the whole of life that composes what we still, for lack of a better term, call nature, then can’t we think that every living being is being-in-the-world ? This may be where respect begins.

On the banks of the Volp

huile sur toile, 116 x 89 cm

My garden is on the banks of the Volp. A river or a torrent, depending on its mood and the rainfall, almost a stream in the height of summer, the Volp has nevertheless carved out its valley. My garden runs along its left bank, and sometimes I stretch a hammock between two cherry plum trees. The sky is in the water, and so is the bank. The fish, chubs and sofies, slipping incognito under the reflections, make ripples as they gobble up water spiders: that is what I see.

Zone humide

huile sur toile, 89×116 cm

It’s a corner of greenery where a river flows. Herons laze or fish for minnows there. Neckties on feet dream of highways. Four lanes of concrete against the squirrels and helmets without feathers to sing the song of progress. Apparently, that’s the only way: destroy the landscape to get there faster. Where?

In the garden

huile sur toile, 116×89 cm

“I’m trying to see the landscape. Besides Leonardo, the Renaissance and classical painting approached it from the perspective of form, somewhat like the gaze of a Greek statue. Impressionism approached it through light. Expressionism through emotional disfiguration. Modern art with the gaze of the city dweller and their distant vision in masses. Cézanne and De Staël painted splendid modern landscapes. Balthus, in his Italian landscapes, attempted to reconcile modern and classical visions. That of professional landscape painters calculates more than it sees. What’s ours? I don’t know. Here, in the garden, we oscillate between photographic striptease, luminous impression, the desire for form, and the premonition of its dislocation. Between the body of the landscape and the landscape of the body.” 

Venice on tour

huile sur toile, 90×116 cm

To see or not to see, that is the question :

Paysage/GPS

huile sur toile, 50×150 cm

The goal of figurative art is not to duplicate reality in its entirety but to capture spatio-temporal values, that is, selective values corresponding to the common memory of a certain group and the capacity of that group to intervene in the physical and human order that surrounds it.” – Pierre Francastel in “L’image, la vision et l’imagination.” Our satellites see everything but will never see a landscape. GPS (Global Positioning System) programs our transits, but the landscape does not transit; it changes from one moment to the next from the same point or another. Satellites are indeed blind in guiding us.

A good reason

huile sur toile, 60×50 cm, coll. particulière

Painting a “still life,” that’s a good reason to open a bottle of Selosse. And if I trust my taste buds, this nature is not dead at all! I’m not usually a big Champagne drinker, but a Selosse wine is never ordinary and it’s already a work of art…

Three onions and a paint brush

huile sur toile, 40×60 cm Prix800€ + envoi

I started by painting these three onions. The painting didn’t stand up. Because the motif is not enough, nor what is wrongly called imitation. It’s the painting that commands. So I added the brush. That’s what makes it stand. Because it’s the brush that brings the painting space to life.

Ô scarole!…

huile sur toile, 20×20 cm, coll. particulière Prix500€ + envoi

May Chuck Berry forgive me for this title. I enjoyed half of this salad for lunch, I kept the heart for the studio. Escarole is fragile, you have to be quick before its cascade of leaves collapses. Hopefully, we’ll eat it…

An apple

huile sur toile, 20×20 cm Prix500€ + envoi

In my small Parisian studio, I dedicate myself to “still lifes.” Tackling an apple after Cézanne is risky, even lost in advance. Nevertheless, one must dare, otherwise there is no art that holds. The painter Carlos Pradal told me, in essence, what he learned from his teacher Bergounian: the essence lies in the emptiness around the object. Obviously, a bit of Carlos’s spirit may have passed into my hand…

3 reported peppers

huile sur toile, 50×61 cm Prix600€ + envoi

There are some pretty fiery peppers at the market. I wanted to paint them. I chose them in accordance with the traffic code. Decontextualization in the realization of a still life is a process that, if I’m not mistaken, the seventeenth century knew how to use well. Out of the context of the kitchen, storage, or dining table, fruits or vegetables take on an existential dimension. You only see them, there’s only them to see. In their presence of color and form. The Spaniards knew how to make metaphysics with still lifes. As a Frenchman and therefore a bit mischievous, I gave us the bill, paid contactlessly, please.

Gourmandise du soir

huile sur toile, 50×50 cm, coll. Particulière

Cette nature pas si morte j’espère, est dédiée à feu mon ami Henry Frédéric Roch.

Sunrise

huile sur toile, 120×90 cm, Coll. particulière

Sunrise on the first day of spring. Ariège is a beautiful country.

Strawberries and chocolate

huile sur toile 50x50cm, Coll. particulière

This is the title of an excellent Cuban film from the 80s. But as I am a painter at the first degree, I see strawberries and chocolate. A small basket of strawberries like the ones found fresh at the moment, the first of the season. It makes you want to bite into them. Done. And a square of dark chocolate with it, it’s a good contrast, simply natural.

A small soup?

huile sur toile, 40×40 cm Coll. particulière

It takes effort to grow. For painters as for others. We compose it and we attack the vegetables. They must be seized, they are tastier that way. We stylize or refine them until the peel. Carrots come easily in orange. The white-violet of turnips is tougher, more geographical. The leek is sliced ​​between the surface and the thread. The background carries the light and the materials. Ever since I really looked at Chardin’s paintings, I wanted to do a still life. It’s as if the gaze pacified itself. A philosopher’s pleasure. I will do others.

The déjeuner sur l’herbe

huile sur toile, 100×150 cm, coll. particulière Prix3500€ + envoi

My admiration for Manet’s work is undeniable. Like him, I believe that one of the major dimensions of painting is revealed to us by Velasquez. We know Manet’s taste for a certain provocation. In this game, I humbly pay homage to him with this luncheon on the grass where it is the men who are naked and a woman who looks. Hence the subtitle. Painting the light and the reflections of the river was a great pleasure. The photo of the painting is poor; the color is veiled on the right. I will redo it, I promise.

I painted this canvas in memory of those moments of exhaustion and pleasure we experienced, my nephew whom I had hired, a former student who became a friend who came to help us, and I, when we were building another floor on my house in the middle of August under a scorching sun. Around noon, when the heat became unbearable, burning, dirty, and sweaty, we would throw ourselves naked into the cool water of the Volp, the stream dominated by my house. The light was so beautiful that I took a photo to mark the scene. Two years later, this painting was born. A rather imposing format allows easy entry into the undergrowth. I painted under the trees, coming to life with the tip of the brush or the bristle of the brush. I was in it. I found the scene again with its warm freshness of shaded water, its quiet voluptuousness of being naked, its conviviality of Eden. And I added my partner’s gaze through the sudden pictorial incarnation of her legs. Did she take the photo? No. Yet she watches.

Paris 

huile sur toile, 100 x 100 cm. Coll. particulière

à Carlos Pradal 

I was crossing the garden of the Palais Royal in Paris when a flock of pigeons fought over a leftover sandwich abandoned in one of those park garbage cans with a metal corolla stretched over a transparent plastic bag to prevent terrorist attacks. Something like a flower of gray-blue pigeons. The carefully raked ground reflected the light: little or no shadow but birds, each for themselves, to get their share of the cake. Few colors, all in value. Which is quite Parisian, to use a phrase from Vian. In the lower right, on the ground, you can see a billiard chalk. One of those blue chalks used to prepare cue tips. A more scrutinizing glance sees a hint of red and a hint of yellow at the bottom of the trash can: it could well be billiard balls. That’s why this painting greets my late friend, the painter Carlos Pradal. He worked in series. He painted a series of pigeons and another of billiard players. And this little blue chalk, as he taught me, balances the painting.

Above Quillan

huile sur toile, 50 x 70 cm. Coll. particulière

Early in the morning, on a motorcycle in the summer chill. Coming out of a curve, a sea of clouds and the village of Quillan emerging from the vapors. Impressionist technique for a motorcyclist’s sensation.

La randonneuse 

huile sur toile, 60 x 50 cm. Coll. particulière

au-dessus de Vielha

Une randonnée en montagne m’a donné deux tableaux. Celui-ci et “Parmi les pierres”, un nu de plus grand format. Le challenge, c’était la roche et le plaisir manifeste de la randonneuse.

Cogito

huile sur toile, 50 x 60 cm. Coll. particulière

Who am I? This cow spoke to me. She asked me who she was to speak to me. I tried to make her a drawing, but it turned into a painting. As always, I wonder how I could paint like that with a light brush, in no time at all. The technique is quite impressionistic, but the light is stopped by the animal. A cow is solid, it’s a big, heavy body, but I had to find her gaze. Try to paint the gaze of a cow, you’ll see. You shouldn’t like steaks for this! Because the beast is alive. And the flies annoy her!…