"It is the woman’s beauty and mystery that have made me paint and sculpt in the first place." The artist, who previously painted only one human figure per painting, has recently begun to represent several figures, and these figures are no longer exclusively women. In sculpture also, the single human figures of the beginning are gradually replaced by intertwined figures, that go by two, by couple, or even by trio or quartet. "Previously, it was the individual that questioned me. Now, increasingly, I paint and sculpt attitudes and relationships." Painting and sculpture are based on different relationships: that between the sculptor-painter and his painting or sculpture, that between colors and shapes, that between the spectator and the work of art, and finally, the possible relationship between the different spectators. "However, I have not become a narrative artist, even if the spectator can invent stories about the human figures they see depicted."
- But why only one subject? -
Because the more one concentrates on one - and only one - subject, the deeper one can go, and the more style and technique can speak freely. If one always seeks to change subjects, it becomes difficult to specialize in it.” It is the unit of subject more than the unit of style and form that characterizes the artist’s work “In a period where artistic currents are so diverse, where it is difficult to adhere to only one current, my influences are various and perpetually renewed. My travels abroad, numerous visits of galleries in the major artistic capitals of the world, regularly feed my inspiration and my artistic activity."
- The technique -
In the beginning, pastel, which is at the same time painting and drawing, allows the artist to display his talents as draughtsman and colorist. Little by little, however, acrylic takes the upperhand. The paint is applied with the brush, first, then with the knife. "I now always use a surface that I already painted previously, and I repaint over that, applying successive layers of undiluted color, with a knife, by leaving chance make use of the underlying shapes and colors. What matters to me now, is color more than the subject matter." The human being still preoccupies the artist, but this preoccupation no longer focuses on identified individuals, but is expressed in a more diffuse manner. The human form has become no more than a pretext to paint and sculpt.
- Finishing a painting -
The great problem of a painter is to determine the right moment when a painting is finished. A painting is both finished, and at the same time never ended, since one can always prolong the action of painting it. "One means for me to end a painting is to part with it, because otherwise there is always the risk that I will use it, paint over it to make an entirely new painting. It is the solution that I have found to solve this problem, deciding when a painting is ended. Paintings are therefore always in the make. The fact that I am constantly torn between the desire to hide and the need to show is not foreign to this particular technique."
- Nudity and movement in sculpture -
"I have always liked nudity. A woman’s nudity is both touching, humble and disturbing, provocative even. My paintings of today no longer show the photographic nudity of my pastels of a few years ago. I hide it now under different layers of colors. But it is still present in my sculpture. In sculpture, I never use a model. I like to allow my fingers to guide my work. I am extremely fond of movement in human bodies: the ultimate challenge is for me to make something static by definition, “mobile”, even if in my sculptures of overlengthened or deformed human figures, it is the absence of movement that I intend to render." ...