23-02-19 Painting

My first birth took place in 1954 in Algiers, then I arrived in France in 1962. From my years in Algeria, it was above all the desert expanses of the Sahara that marked me. My second birth took place in 1995, when a plastic arts teacher introduced me to the world of art. On the point of stopping, believing I had explored what painting could bring me, I had a revelation. Alone in the studio, in front of a large canvas, something that I do not know I possess will reveal itself to me. With each brushstroke, each color change, I felt a kind of euphoria. The canvas was assembled intuitively almost in spite of me. I had to reassure myself, find the answers to all the questions that invaded my mind. Then begins a two-year period of introspection and self-analysis. I met other artists, some renowned such as Pierre Soulages, one of my major influences with Zao Wou Ki and Olivier Debré, to find out if they had had the same experiences. Following this initiatory journey was born an artistic approach. And to concretize it pictorially, I had to undertake another research, technical this one. The source of my creation is based on emotion, I wait for the canvas to move me. My writing is oriented towards a painting that appeals precisely to this sensibility. Through this inner journey triggered by my paintings, I am in perpetual search of this sensation and do not stop until it occurs. In some paintings, we can distinguish a graphic expression where the color that composes them seems to be structured around the line. If it is necessary to name the influences of the masters that I recognize, it is first of all the canvases of the Impressionists that come to mind. Just as I feel a particular affinity with the paintings of the precursor of this movement - Turner - in whom the line comes to give just the right amount of figurative structure to the color and the light that emerges from it. Throughout my work and my journey, I moved away from drawing as a structuring element of my paintings. Focused on a more sensitive and intuitive approach to color and its transparencies. Thus, I am looking for experiences, to be in front of the painting, in front of the canvas and by extension, the experience of being in the world.