North Sea Melancholy

As a kid, I went many summers on holidays in the South of France. I can very clearly remember this unique Mediterranean light. As a grown-up, I'm still very attracted by it, like a huge insect flying around a lamp. Nearly 30 years after my last trip to the South of France, I keep seeing the Mediterranean like my natural habitat. Most of my life, I've been staying away from "cold or/and northern places" while travelling. So you can imagine how strange that was for me to meet the North Sea for the first time. During a grey autumn. Surprisingly, that was beautiful. The beaches, the villages, the towns all have that strange feeling of melancholy and loneliness. We felt like they where places out of space, time out of time. Landscapes were like  weird paintings full of emptyness. Emptyness, but optimistic emptyness. Like black and white drawing books pages waiting for colours. Empty pages everyone can fill like he/she wants. Empty pages waiting to be filled with colourful dreams. Pure poetry. 

That was the low tourist season, so even amusement parks were communicating this feeling of mysterious emptyness.

Houses, dogs, people or even paper planes were contributing to increase that feeling of loneliness. A beautiful loneliness. The few human beings and animals we saw were like ghostly apparitions disapearing as quick as they arrive.

And those colours painting a picture more perfect than the most perfect paintings : beige, turquoise white and teal. 

As an artist, this is impossible not to be inspired by such a captivating atmosphere. I started with a collection of collages...

...and then paintings. Among them, one of the few I made using watercolours. Years later, it appeared that was quite a good idea, since this is the first work I sold to an unknown. 

Then came a second watercolours painting plus other ones made using the technic I'm the more comfortable with : acrylic.

Strange Totem

Totems. One of the strongest symbol for anthropologists like me. Or better said : "for people who have a degree in anthropology and boast saying they are anthropologists even if they aren't really anymore". This first painting is one of the few that takes place in Switzerland. Most of my inspiration comes from foreign places where I've been (Asia or Latin America mostly) or I'm dreaming of visiting (Africa). This one is different : we can see on the background what is (or looks like) the most famous mountain of my homeland : the Matterhorn. But this isn't the only "Swiss made" on this painting : on the right stands a kind of totem that directly comes from Paul Klee's art. As you may (not) know : he was a German painter that was born and spent most of his life in Switzerland. I added on it a "spoon of mexicanity" with the skull and the bright colours.

The "real" Matterhorn apearing like unreal on a picture I took in Zermatt :

An invitation to climb it (or not) :

Years later, my fascination for totems came back on three more paintings with diverse landscapes. The first one represents three "Matterhorn-like" mountains, but obviously doesn't take place in Switzerland as we see Asian temples. On the three of them, I'm playing with transparency and with the contrast between transparent figures vs opaque ones (especially on the last painting).

Then why this fascination for totems? Because they are a perfect fusion between human beings and trees. They imitate the shapes and the features of human being. And at the same time they stands with the wisdom and serenity of trees. They stand for ages on their place, without moving. Completely indifferent to the world around them. For me, they symbolize a quiet force that care for us or the place they stand on (at the entrance of villages in South Korea). They are like the "apus" (the spirits of the mountain) in Andean culture : a very strong caring force that can get angry at you if you don't respect it. It's a kinda metaphor for nature and its force. In a certain way, totems and mountains are fellow creatures.

Once upon a time in Thailand

Summer 2009 was a stepping stone in my life : that was the first time I left Europe. Mexico influenced my art and my life more than any other places before. Summer 2015 was another stepping stone since I got to know a new continent : Asia. I first went to visit a German friend of mine who was living with his wife and son in Ubon Ratchathani district ( Eastern part of Thailand). That was a perfect introduction to this country for me. A place were tourists were as rare as polar bears in Switzerland. A farm in the middle of nowhere in which my friend and his family were producing their own food. That means fresh local vegetables, fruits, cereals and meat. Then deliciously cooked by his wife to create that unique Thai cuisine which is incredibly subtile and healthy. I spent hours watching her cooking, trying to learn how to cook Thai cuisine. Unforgettable moments. Like that night when they cooked one of their duck freshly killed for this special occasion (sorry vegetarian friends). I watched carefuly the whole process for hours (except when they sacrificed the bird). While the duck was cooking, the kids around catched some flying bugs, grilled them in a frying pan and eat them. I'm normally quite adventurous about exotic food, but that time I haven't been courageous enough to try this crunchy snack.

That was also my first contact with Buddhism as we went to visit some temples. 

One day, we decided to visit a monastery lost in a remoted mountain. On the road, we had a minor car accident that cost our car its mirror. The road wasn't that good : muddy and full of holes. But after a few hours, the beauty of the site made us forget very quickly that incident. Tens of buddha statues were leading us to our  destination. As we arrived, a woman monk invited us to meet the leader monk of the place. That was a bald man with dragon tatoos on his arms. I was so impressed by his strong presence I could hardly look him in the eyes. He show us a young monk and told my friend he just cut his hair (that was lying in a vessel) a few hours before to get prepared to meet his spiritual father : my friend. Then he told me I was very welcome as a Christian and gave me a small dragon for good luck. We all left that place very moved. We felt we had lived a moment we'll never forget. A moment of peace and incredibly positive vibration.

And that moment in the middle of the jungle, near waterfalls, where two monks appeared suddenly. With their yellow clothes, the seemed so unreal in the middle of the green and gray. This sight gave birth to the wonderful picture you can see below.

After a few days of  total immersion into the Thai culture (I mean Thai countryside people everyday life) with my friend playing the role of cultural translator, I headed west. I then saw many temples, each one unique in its style. Step by step, I got to know more about Thai Buddhism history, tradition and modern customs. Harassing my friend and the guides I met with thousands of questions to feed my curiosity.

  

Like Latin America did years before, Thailand culture deeply inspired my art. Here a few drawings I made on my art book during my trip :

Since then, my hat has been a strong symbol on my travel pictures, here with the bag friends gave me in Cusco (my second home) and a Brazilian book. Each one of my travel can be remembered by one book at least. For this one, that was Jorge Amado's Capitan of the Sands and Alex Hailey's Roots.

Back home, those pictures and drawings nourished new paintings. 

Hope you enjoyed that trip with me to Thailand. Now its time to go back home...and get prepared for another artistic travel. Stay tuned for the next article!

That famous man whose name means „shining snake“ (quechua) and „thankful to god“ (arabic)

At first, that was a simple not even finished drawing. Nearly a sketch. I made it during a period when I was studying portraits. I made thousands of them during some years, trying hard to learn how to draw faces. Most weren’t that good. Some weren’t that bad. This one belongs to the 2nd category. As a die-hard fan of 2 Pac, I decided to portray his so expressive face. When I finished drawing the eyes, I realised they were so expressive and summarized so perfectly who Tupac was, that completing the drawing would only make it look worst. That strange moment artists know so well : when you are very satisfied with what you made until then (this kinda feeling is rare), that you are literally paralyzed by the fear of ruining it if you add something more. You are at a crossroads with such a hard decision to make : to leave your drawing/painting nearly perfect (or better said : not bad) but unfinished, or to finish it with the risk of making it worst than before. That time, I choosed to leave it unfinished, like a young over-talented musician or basketball player that died way too young. That one that will feed discussions for decades about how great he/she could have been if he/she would have lived longer. Or how bad… I like the idea of unifinished things because they set no bounds to the imagination. They leave everything possible.

That drawing isnt technically my best one. But that eyes expression is something I have never been able to reach again. This is very important for me to put emotions in my drawings or paintings. This 2 Pac’s portrait is maybe my best attempt to put soul in my artistic works. But my portraits only reached maturity when I learned to paint…years after. I  decided to use this drawing to inspire a painting. At first, I was afraid I would never be able to give it as much soul as I gave to the drawing. But step by step, concentrating hard on it, I have succeeded giving the eyes that powerful feeling I gave to the sketch (I leave you judge it), plus an extra passion thanks to the orange colour that wasn’t existing on the black & white drawing.

Why Pac then?

- Cause he was so good at describing emotions or life situations with simple but strong words (like Bob Marley)

- Cause his music has so much soul

- Cause his lyrics – even if located in black American ghettos – are still universal

- Cause his music is timeless and still move people more than 20 years after his death (even teenagers that weren’t even born when he died)

- Cause he had such a bright mind (don‘t be fooled by him playing the dumb gangster)

- Cause he had the potential to be one of the greatest leader fort he black community that we had seen for years

- Cause he was such a great actor that when he started starring gangsters in movies he could not stop it when the cameras went off (what eventually cost his life later)

- Cause he was one of the best at communicating emotions with his music (a great actor I told you)

- Cause music miss him so damn much

- Cause his biography is so unbelievable it seems like pure fiction. Imagine that he spent the first months of his life in jail, while in the womb of his mother, a Black Panther activist convicted of carrying bombings in New York. Many other of his family members were also Black Panther members or thugs who spent years in jails. Even before he was born, he was already damned. Growing up, he studied poetry and theatre, arts he used to channel his hatred of a poor young black man living in the USA. But he finally became famous thanks to another art : music. He was first rapping as Mc New York (he lived there), a fact that is very ironic since he became later the leader of the West Coast rap scene vs the East Coast scene. A leadership that led him directly to death in 1996. And it’s no fiction. A true legend.

Communication Bird

Time flies : 3 months passed since I’ve last posted an article on this blog. The last one was about those irratible birds called swanns. Todays‘ paintings also contain birds, but the topic is totally different. It’s about communication. On the first one, a blond woman is shouting at a man who seems quite indifferent to her agitation. A colourful bird is standing between them. It looks like he’s protecting the man from the woman‘s anger. Or maybe the bird is like a metaphor of the man. Or maybe it’s his totem-animal (some North-American or African cultures believe each human being or tribe has a „totem-animal“ that protects him). The second painting has a much more serene atmosphere. The women is smilling while the man is perplex. Still the same bird with the same colours, but its shape is not very clear, nearly disapearing in the background (or making one with it). It’s like on this painting the bird is not useful anymore, so he’s slowly vanishing. What’s your own interpretation of them?

Swann

It's been a long time since I last posted an article on this blog. Here we are back with swanns, this damn bird that pinched me in Geneva's lake when I was a child. Years passed. I finally became wise (joke) and got to make paintings and drawings to honour this animal with such a bad temper, but so elegant also...until it goes out of the water and starts walking in a clumsy way making it looks like the animal version of Charlie Chaplin. That's why the swanns I painted are in the water, : to preserve their dignity. I didn't want to humiliate them painting or drawing them while they are walking. Maybe if another bad tempered swann is going to pinch me again I'll change my mind and I'll paint a whole serie of walking swanns. Maybe it's just a cold war waiting to get warm again, between swanns and me. 

The Rhine falls : an open door for imagination.

Schaffhausen - a city that is situated in the eastern part of Switzerland - is famous for the Rhine falls. The first black and white pictures with the castle on the top of the rocks have a Caspar David Friedrich romantic paintings atmosphere. The next two pictures highlight the green mosses that seems to illustrate the  apparently desperate but victorious in the facts try of the vegetation to surivive in an hostile environment. Then a blue door and a strange window, metaphors of the falls as an open gate to new spaces and imagination. There is a strong contrast between the windows that invites us to travel and the tree on its right that symbolizes roots and origins. In reality this apparent contrast is a balance every people with a nomad soul knows a bit more at each journey. The more we travel the more we know where we come from. The more we travel the bigger our roots grow. The last picture shows the historical part of Schaffhausen. Its roots.