Pierre-Yves Blasco

I am a French-Swiss artist,68, living on the banks of a river in Botswana.
For 25 years, I led a successful career in finance in Switzerland, At 45, at the peak of my career, I made a radiacal choice: I sold my companies and left with my wife and our three children for a four-years round -the-world voyage on a catamaran.
It was during this voyage that we discovered Botswana. We fall in love with it and decided to make it our home.
This country, as large as Texas and home to only two million people, hosts the largest elephant population on earth. The wildlife and landscapes are somptuous. There is no shortage of subjects. Living here brought back a passion I had abandonned for my professionnal life: painting.
I now live and paint by the river. Almost every day at sunset, I witness extraordinary panoramas as animals come to drink. These moments are my daily inspiration.
Working in oil or acrylic on canvas, I paint wildlife as monuments, My work explores texture, age and soul - the cracked skin of an elephant, the intense gaze of a big cat. Sometimes hyperrealistic and powerful, as in my monochrome series, sometimes dreamlike and surreal, my paintingsare always a tribute to the wild. Each piece is an original painting, created in my ...

I am self-taught. I've never had the opportunity to tzake painting lessons, so I've learned along the way through my many mistakes,

Several group exhibitions in Botswana and Zimbabwe, one in London, one in Geneva and the most recent : Art Nou Gallery, Barcelona, Spain.