Eccentric Owl Painting

JEAN-FRANCOIS DOR Jean-Francois is Belgian and started painting when he was 15 after seeing some paintings by Hyeronimus Bosch, in particular “The Garden of Earthly Delights” which fascinated him and inspired him forever after. In 1987, just arrived in London, at a private view at the Anthony d'Offay Gallery he was plunged in a world where Andy Warhol, Peter Blake, Gilbert and Georges, Gerard Richter, Lucian Freud, Francis Bacon and many others mingled together. He subsequently founded the European Open platform which helps artists exhibit their work in unconventional spaces and at the work place. Since, he has exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts, the Royal Festival Hall, the Arts Club, the French Embassy and the Banque Paribas amongst many places and some of his works now belong to private & public collections around the world. Jean- Francois uses vibrant colours and his paintings are often close to abstraction before one surprisingly discovers a form or a meaning . If you look closely at his work, you will sometimes distinguish a figure or a sign which reflect Jean-François’s love for life, arts and people. Some works are strangely close to primitive art, with some sort of mysterious and unexpected insight into past and lost civilisations. Most of his work is acrylic paint, mixed media, inks, watercolours, gouaches, oil pastel, seaweeds and other materials. He signs his work with a quadruple C letter interlinked and intertwined. When you enter his universe, the frontier between reality and illusion becomes unclear and you discover another world. Jean Francois was chairman of the Arts Club Charitable Trust promoting the Arts for many years. He is invited to judge prestigious awards, mainly in London, such as BITE (http://www.mallgalleries.org.uk/index.php?pid=278), The excellence in drawing award and various other awards listed on the Trust's website.