THE ARTIST'S MOTHER or ARRANGEMENT IN GREY AND BLACK Nr 1 after Whistler Painting

For many years, I have been exploring ship-graveyards around the shores of Brittany, the atmosphere of which has always strongly attracted me. These are places that call for meditation, sending messages to whom can open his ears to hear them. Some say these graveyards serve no purpose - but then no less than human graveyards do. Whatever the case, as part of the local patrimony, they are doomed to disappear very shortly in the modern times we are living. When you look at the wrecks at a close range, you can discover some fascinating views ; and I personally found there some unusual subjects for my paintings and for my photography. Under the ravages of the sun and the wind, of the water and the salt, the wooden hulls display, like onions do, fragments of the successive layers of paint they received throughout their lives. The saturated colours are often the same as those of Van Gogh’s palette, whereas in other spots the vision reminds us of the compositions created by Nicolas de Staël’s palette knife. As for the steel hulls, they have long since lost their coats of paint. Instead, the elements have eaten into the metal, bringing to light some iridescences with unlikely colours and mysterious fantasia : BEAUTY IS EVERYWHERE, YOU JUST HAVE TO GO AND FIND IT ... A book showing a choice of 150 photographs has been self-edited in 2015 and two prints of it have already been issued.