Philippe Lejeune

Pawtucket, RI, United States

About Philippe Lejeune

French Artist living in Rhode Island. In an image it's the support ( what I paint on) that interests me, that directs my attention. It becomes what I paint with... I choose to paint on “manufactured wood,” and like a sculptor working in relation to his material, I work toward painting something that is more about the origin, or the nature of the material. Wood is surprisingly an infinitely open and intriguing medium. Whereas canvas is passive, wood is warm. Like the markings and stratification of the sculptor’s marble, the unique knots, veins, textures, and patterns of the wood’s grain become integral factors in the painting’s composition and imagery, as if the dead tree is suggesting the creation of a new tree ~ an echo of the original ~ and a comment on the very nature of the supporting medium. The knots of the plywood dictate the trunks and limbs and branches of the tree, but the composition is decidedly abstract, unlike traditional painting, where the brushstroke of the artist become more apparent the closer one gets to the canvas, the closer you get to the wood, the more you see the tree. The hand of the artist disappears. Using Water, coffee to stain the wood, black acrylic and some love. Performing the magic of the manufactured wood being revealed & recovered of their essence by the illusionistic action of painting them. It is a sign of recognition, designed to repair or cross a separation of distance. The symbol is an object of agreement that exists to be the accordance of the minds and the reunification of the separated forms. The art is beneficial because it is symbolic, consolidating and restorative, and bringing a sense of unity between what has been broken, between what is and what is no more. How it started? When I was painting on wood I quickly realized that it was not a neutral material like the usual canvas, but that it was very much alive with all its quality & essence even after being cut and manufactured for our ways of life. One day I found a piece of plywood laying down near a house construction, abandoned & covered with mud and certainly going to the dump. I brought it back to the studio and when I took a sponge to clean the mud, the trace I did was just like the trunk of a tree. It was like this piece of wood was telling me, “What are you doing, don’t you see I am a tree?” I then chose to paint more branches by cleaning some parts of the mud. From that time on I chose to only paint branches on all the manufactured pieces of wood I could find and to devote my expression to the symbolic effort to bring back the tree to its unity, to reveal the material through the means of some simple painted actions.

Education:

Studied Printmaking @ L'Ecole Nationale Supérieure Des Arts Décoratifs, Paris France.

Exhibitions:

@ the Yellow Peril Gallery, Providence ~ Solo exhibition ~ Ceci n'est pas une image." March 19 -April 30 2016.

@ Jamestown Art Center - Yellow Peril Gallery curates “Burning Down the House” Exposing 270 Shingles & glass installations - July 3rd to August 15th, 2015

@ Scope Art Basel Miami ~ booth exhibit with the Yellow Peril Gallery, Providence RI
Small tree’s painting. December 2-7 2014

@ New Bedford Art Museum ~ “Collectors III: Discerning Eyes” curated by the Yellow Peril.
Installation of 280 Shingles on a wall.
September 26 - Nov.16 2014

@ Higgins Art Gallery Oct. - Nov. 2014 ~ Artist in Residence ~ Cape Cod Community College

@ Gallery 263 ~ Wood Juried Exhibition at Gallery 263 ~ “Ceci est un arbre” ~ Dec. 2013