As a child I was by myself most of the time, happy to spend afternoons in the garden playing with soil or sand, branches, stones and leaves. I would create drawings with sticks of woods and add some flowers or leaves decoration. It was just exploration- not trying to reproduce figures, moments enjoying the different materials I had around me. My loneliness was my freedom, the same freedom I feel when working in the studio today.
The first image I remember from the black and white TV we had at home was that night of 1969, when for the first time man walked on the moon. I was too young to understand what it was all about, but that night, a single image had a huge impact on me : the earth seen from the moon. There I was, an invisible particle in an immensity I had to discover. My quest as an artist unconsciously started that night.
While studying Art in Paris I discovered another passion, cinema, and worked in the film industry for about 20 years. Cinema and painting have always been crossing each other in my life. My background as a film editor is still somehow present in my work, whether braiding papers, or assembling different paper works to create a dialogue through a single piece. Another powerfull enriching influence is travel. I have this need to explore different cultures, trying to appreciate the mysteries of life. Everywhere I go, I spend hours observing traces, worn-out walls, floors, old buildings half-destroyed, textiles, daily habits and craftsmen at work, imprints of time and weather in the landscapes… the more I work, the more I feel the need to get closer to nature.
Even though I started like almost everyone as a figurative artist, I soon realised that my quest was more about forms, light and colours. A non-figurative approach through which I am constantly trying to express the different emotions of memories and traces I witness.
And thus the “square format”- While nature produces curves, rounds and circles, a square is a human creation, not naturally produced by nature, a sign of civilisation. Squares are my observation grounds.
Nothing abstract about my work but an attempt to figure the multiple manifestations of life and history on this planet, my childhood planet, the one I had seen from the moon.
