David Lynch's film 'Lost Highway'which was rather impenetrable, evoking a sense of wonder, inspired Arthur Bernard to create a series of landscapes with the same title. From memory, he painted images of things that had struck him as he watched the landscape during his train trips.

In the first layout of a painting, which is a spontaneous reflection of fragments of memory, the image is still more or less reconnisable. However, this is only a starting point - the final result will be an imaginary landscape.
Subsequently, Arthur Bernard breaks down this first layout, constucting his acrylic paintings layer after layer. never knowing in advance where he will end up, he searches for a meaning that is relevant to him in these landscapes. After all, the title 'Lost Highway'suggest that it is not only the artist himself, or the figures in the landscape, who are trying to find their way in unfamiliar surroundings in which anything might happen to them, but the viewers as well.

Arthur Bernard sees some common ground between his work and the semiabstract landscapes by American painter Richard Diebenkorn (mid-1950s), and has great admiration for the simplicity and variety of the seemingly simple tables and coffeepots of Dutch painter Klaas Gubbels.

His warm coloured, often large paintings show his love for the sun-warmed French landscape. It is no surprise that he buys the pigments for his self-prepared acrylic paint in the Vaucluse.

To an increasing extent, Arthur Bernard's paintings find their way abroad. In 2003 he exhibted in Madrid. Coming September his work will be shown in Switserland ( solo exhibition /Athenaeum Gallery in Founex, just outside Geneva). He is a participant in Bazart 2004, which is aimed at making art accessible and affordable to a wide audience, with outlets including Paris, Lyon, Strasbourg, Nantes, Marseille and Berlin. There is increasing interest in his work in Canada and the United States.

Edith Deutman
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