"I discover, amazed, the light, the immense sky and freedom" ...
I am seven years old when my parents move to the south of France, by the sea, between Leucate and le Barcarès. I am astonished by what I discoverer: the light, the gigantic sky and freedom.
At 14 years old, I attend fine art evening classes in Perpignan. In a large room lined with imposing windows, I learn how to draw with a pencil by copying plaster moulding. Later, a professor with a generous beard introduces us the basics of sketching naked models.
I adore the first classes. I feel free and unbound, I do not like school except when taught with the Freinet method, as I experienced in blissful grade two. However, my true nature immediately comes back and, while progressing a little, my own ignorance is starting to surface. I still remember it, as if it was yesterday: the eye and the will learning more quickly than the hand. The pleasure of drawing often gives way to an invasive doubt.
Two years later, after selection, I am accepted at the Applied Arts School of Lyon. I try all manners of drawing, except the comic strip. I love the delicate transparencies of the ink and wash technique and of coloured pencils. They evoke more than they tell if I believe my self-portrait.
After graduation, it is out of the question to show my paintings.However, I get a taste of the Fine Arts school in Aix-en-Provence where there was no water to rinse our brushes: a joke! The too big faculty imposes itself impersonal. I hate. However, I adore art history lectures which tell the man’s ways of life.
But by painting, I expose myself, revealing me shameless. The most critical eye over my work is mine. I understand that art, in any shape or form, increases my sensitivity, making me more vulnerable. While, since childhood, I learn to deal with my tumultuous philosophical questionings, I know that I am absolutely not suited to the world order that we created. Thus, I decide to immerse myself into society to discover human nature. With all my power, I will adapt or I will die.
To honour my childhood dream, I return to Paris. I work in advertising, as a press officer, I learn accounting and secretarial work. At the age of 25, I fly to Ireland: it is urgent for me to speak English fluently.
I look around; I write when I have the chance, I try to understand the lack of harmony. I am consumed by my search and overwhelmed by our ruthless human nature. Back in Paris, I make a decision. More than my thirst for learning, quenched in the large capital, I prefer the quality of life of my childhood, which I found again in Dublin: I move back to Catalonia.
Books are everywhere, information flows, Internet is beginning to unfold. I settle backin and grab my brushes. I was in Mexico, Canada and the United States. I am back from Madagascar and Morocco. I am so fulfilled that I can now confront myself and show my work. I first use acrylic paint, so useful when your entire house is your workshop. Oil comes next, sensuous, taking more and more space, imposing its fragrance. I exhibit my work at the Park Hotel in Perpignan, in the restaurant owned by Pascal Borrell and Marie-France Bailly in Saint-Cyprien, in the streets of the village of Maureillas, and in the Triarchie art gallery in Marseille. But I have other obligations to meet. My house is built in bare building blocks. Once again, I am poor. I become a brick and a tile-layer, a gardener, so that I can finish building my house.I join Freemasonry to build my life as I build my house, between vines and orchards.
The philosophy of Freemasonry gives me great strength. I find all the resources and the energy to finish building my house: it is an initiation to the stone wall building which I chose to construct traditionally. At the time and for ten years, I worked as a self-employedfood import expert. Freemasons can sometimes be pathetic, but Freemasonry always remains a spurting source of joyful knowledge.
I learn to heal with my hands and I return to meditation. I continue to question what science delays to study languidly without bias. The answers that I was guessing as a child have become not so much knowledge but evidence. The purpose of our stay on earth is to learn Love, to develop it inside us, to release it, no matter how this is done. Our soul is immortal, foolish to want to live as flesh and blood for a thousand years.
After 48 years of wandering, I finally meet the beautiful soul to whom I am married. I do not paint, but my house has become my masterpiece, having taught me to be bold and patient. It is heartbreaking, but I sell it, I stop working and we swap our life for freedom. We find refuge in a small village suspended in the Fenouillèdes, where time has stopped.
Our new house, by choice and without being ostentatious, turns out to be riddled with defects from the previous refurbishment, delaying even more the choices I had made: to start again painting and writing. 6.5 degrees in the kitchen in winter, days of Tramontane and streams of water pouring through rock in the dining room and the kitchen are forcing us to resume our workmanship activities.
Essential work has now been done. The brushes are back out and I finished my first book while writing and drawing children stories, aimed at the children attending kindergarten in my adopted village, Caramany.
I have not yet put away my trowels, will I ever? But anyhow, Art is finding its way back into the house. I no longer fear that it will destroy me. I blame the actions of men for almost bringing me down, or rather I blame myself, for failing to see my stripes.
Since childhood, I try to reveal the better side of humanity, in a gesture, a look, an attitude, to find the ubiquitous presence of the magic of life. Worn by our eyes, imagined in our thoughts, created by our words, we shape the world. It embodies what we are at every moment. Even if we do not know, a work of art emerges from each of our lives. I do not doubt that we are capable of building the world that we desire. Others are part of me, as much as I am a part of them, only our choices make the difference.
When I paint, my preference goes to the evocation of our earth. I focus on its beauty and I hide, by choice, the ugliness whose power I know: it tells us who we are and who we decide to be. However, taking into account our ongoing transformations, painting will certainly bring me back to symbolism in order to propel me into that new order that we are building together.
I resumed exhibiting my paintings in September 2016, on the occasion of the celebration of the fifty years of the rural home of my village, at Le P'tit Carmagnol. It is decided, I continue.
At 14 years old, I attend fine art evening classes in Perpignan. In a large room lined with imposing windows, I learn how to draw with a pencil by copying plaster moulding. Later, a professor with a generous beard introduces us the basics of sketching naked models.
I adore the first classes. I feel free and unbound, I do not like school except when taught with the Freinet method, as I experienced in blissful grade two. However, my true nature immediately comes back and, while progressing a little, my own ignorance is starting to surface. I still remember it, as if it was yesterday: the eye and the will learning more quickly than the hand. The pleasure of drawing often gives way to an invasive doubt.
Two years later, after selection, I am accepted at the Applied Arts School of Lyon. I try all manners of drawing, except the comic strip. I love the delicate transparencies of the ink and wash technique and of coloured pencils. They evoke more than they tell if I believe my self-portrait.
After graduation, it is out of the question to show my paintings.However, I get a taste of the Fine Arts school in Aix-en-Provence where there was no water to rinse our brushes: a joke! The too big faculty imposes itself impersonal. I hate. However, I adore art history lectures which tell the man’s ways of life.
But by painting, I expose myself, revealing me shameless. The most critical eye over my work is mine. I understand that art, in any shape or form, increases my sensitivity, making me more vulnerable. While, since childhood, I learn to deal with my tumultuous philosophical questionings, I know that I am absolutely not suited to the world order that we created. Thus, I decide to immerse myself into society to discover human nature. With all my power, I will adapt or I will die.
To honour my childhood dream, I return to Paris. I work in advertising, as a press officer, I learn accounting and secretarial work. At the age of 25, I fly to Ireland: it is urgent for me to speak English fluently.
I look around; I write when I have the chance, I try to understand the lack of harmony. I am consumed by my search and overwhelmed by our ruthless human nature. Back in Paris, I make a decision. More than my thirst for learning, quenched in the large capital, I prefer the quality of life of my childhood, which I found again in Dublin: I move back to Catalonia.
Books are everywhere, information flows, Internet is beginning to unfold. I settle backin and grab my brushes. I was in Mexico, Canada and the United States. I am back from Madagascar and Morocco. I am so fulfilled that I can now confront myself and show my work. I first use acrylic paint, so useful when your entire house is your workshop. Oil comes next, sensuous, taking more and more space, imposing its fragrance. I exhibit my work at the Park Hotel in Perpignan, in the restaurant owned by Pascal Borrell and Marie-France Bailly in Saint-Cyprien, in the streets of the village of Maureillas, and in the Triarchie art gallery in Marseille. But I have other obligations to meet. My house is built in bare building blocks. Once again, I am poor. I become a brick and a tile-layer, a gardener, so that I can finish building my house.I join Freemasonry to build my life as I build my house, between vines and orchards.
The philosophy of Freemasonry gives me great strength. I find all the resources and the energy to finish building my house: it is an initiation to the stone wall building which I chose to construct traditionally. At the time and for ten years, I worked as a self-employedfood import expert. Freemasons can sometimes be pathetic, but Freemasonry always remains a spurting source of joyful knowledge.
I learn to heal with my hands and I return to meditation. I continue to question what science delays to study languidly without bias. The answers that I was guessing as a child have become not so much knowledge but evidence. The purpose of our stay on earth is to learn Love, to develop it inside us, to release it, no matter how this is done. Our soul is immortal, foolish to want to live as flesh and blood for a thousand years.
After 48 years of wandering, I finally meet the beautiful soul to whom I am married. I do not paint, but my house has become my masterpiece, having taught me to be bold and patient. It is heartbreaking, but I sell it, I stop working and we swap our life for freedom. We find refuge in a small village suspended in the Fenouillèdes, where time has stopped.
Our new house, by choice and without being ostentatious, turns out to be riddled with defects from the previous refurbishment, delaying even more the choices I had made: to start again painting and writing. 6.5 degrees in the kitchen in winter, days of Tramontane and streams of water pouring through rock in the dining room and the kitchen are forcing us to resume our workmanship activities.
Essential work has now been done. The brushes are back out and I finished my first book while writing and drawing children stories, aimed at the children attending kindergarten in my adopted village, Caramany.
I have not yet put away my trowels, will I ever? But anyhow, Art is finding its way back into the house. I no longer fear that it will destroy me. I blame the actions of men for almost bringing me down, or rather I blame myself, for failing to see my stripes.
Since childhood, I try to reveal the better side of humanity, in a gesture, a look, an attitude, to find the ubiquitous presence of the magic of life. Worn by our eyes, imagined in our thoughts, created by our words, we shape the world. It embodies what we are at every moment. Even if we do not know, a work of art emerges from each of our lives. I do not doubt that we are capable of building the world that we desire. Others are part of me, as much as I am a part of them, only our choices make the difference.
When I paint, my preference goes to the evocation of our earth. I focus on its beauty and I hide, by choice, the ugliness whose power I know: it tells us who we are and who we decide to be. However, taking into account our ongoing transformations, painting will certainly bring me back to symbolism in order to propel me into that new order that we are building together.
I resumed exhibiting my paintings in September 2016, on the occasion of the celebration of the fifty years of the rural home of my village, at Le P'tit Carmagnol. It is decided, I continue.
- As part of the Balade en terre d'Artistes, I opened the doors of my workshop from 2 pm to 6 pm on May 13 and 14, 2017
- Tautavel , exhibition for a month, in its Palais des Congrès. Vernissage in June 9th 2017.
- Le Soler will host my next exhibition in the wedding hall in October from 2nd to 25th.The vernissage is scheduled for October 6th 2017 at 6:30 pm.