I will tell you about my career in two parts. Today the first part will address the hidden and personal artist's life, as long as I have not dared to expose myself. It lasted 45 years. In the second part I will tell you about the artist part which is exhibited. I have always been drawn to drawing, not necessarily painting. When I was just a few years old, my parents were fascinated by one of my paintings showing a large, deep blue sky occupying over 95% of my page and below three little Three Kings seemingly overwhelmed by the night. I saw this painting only once, surreal. It was the only artistic feat of my early childhood. In college and high school, I was bored in drawing lessons, often misunderstood with more than average results (0 points recovered in drawing in the bac) despite numerous projects of creation of various objects and cartoon. Drawing was my favorite subject and yet I was not successful.
I felt a deep attraction to drawing, almost obsessive like some young people attracted to music. Through the comic strip of Asterix or Gotlieb in the magazine Pilote that I devoured in my room. I spent my time making caricatures, those of my friends, those of my teachers. My friends constantly wanted to have photocopies of my notebooks of which the left page was reserved for the drawings. I have thus accumulated ten years of drawing in my notebooks, sometimes punished (but not too much) by the teachers who caught me caricaturing them.
Then the desire in adolescence to make more realistic portraits came. Always in pencil and without ever daring to color. Pretty pretty works but tasteless and without depth because at this age, you don't even dare to press the lead of your pencil. After the baccalaureate, I decided to pursue a scientific career after the strong advice of my parents. But at the same time, I took evening classes at the School of Fine Arts in Toulouse to refine my technique and finally get into the portrait from life and the color that I cherish so much today. From this period and the one that followed in Canada at the School of Fine Arts in Ottawa, I kept this crazy desire to experiment, to try and to create. Also the will to assert oneself for what we create. From that time, I felt the desire to paint with whatever I could get my hands on, chestnuts from the garden, coffee grounds from the bottom of my cup or shampoo from the bottom of my bathtub.
Between this first early work on the left and this sketch at the Beaux Arts on the right, there are three or four years of study of drawing. We see undoubtedly the affirmation of the gesture and the awareness of volumes, shadows and structural lines. I could go from a flat world (almost two-dimensional) to a much more lively world. It was enough to add color to it.
Here is my style was asserted. I took pleasure in painting. My paintings were popular and yet I could not part with them and especially not show them to others than the reassuring circle of close family. Art must be a form of sharing. But exposing yourself is a word that takes on its full meaning because it is your guts that you show. There was therefore a need for a new click that I am about to tell you in the second part.