la Galerie d'Arts - Painters

I was born in 1946 and worked nearly 40 years as a teacher with boys and girls having deep school difficulties.
I began painting during the mid eighties.
Self taught painter, I worked alone. But acting this way is laborious, painfully timewasting and makes you hesitating.
Progress are hardly quantifiable and often not correctly assessed.
Steadfastness and modesty are required and of course, Work, a lot of Work !
It sometimes brings you to stop and begin again, without losing heart.

Painters of the previous generation such as Maurice Stoppani, a professional painter and my former high school art professor or talented painters like Ukrainian background painter André Lévicky, Henri Gilles Girardin, Alain Cheval and so friendly expressionist from Lyon painter Gilbert Pécoud were in my view a bit like "landmarks" and showed the way to me!
Museums, art galleries, shows,books and magazines are, as for me, necessary places where you can swap and avoid an appalling navel gazing.
All along the time I was a teacher drawing and painting helped me coping with teenagers of both sexs almost droping out of school. This kind of activities let them express themselves more fluently and easily than with the use of speech or writing.

I like painting, I like choosing and assembling colours, struggling with my palette knife on the canvas! But what is the Thing and a half for me is Drawing.
Drawing is something like magic when on your two dimension sheet of paper you can see appearing a three dimension still life, a lively portrait or a real like landscape….A few quick lines to sketch a face or catch an attitude : that’s quite an unspeakable pleasure !
Marine lives are among my favourite themes but I mainly work on research subjects I try to go into untill the point when I need to turn from it and study something else.

Painting is not so easy; it is not a"kind hobby" it’s awfully hard: it on one hand may give happiness to you and sometimes –often !- annoyance and disappointment on the other…
Producing good works requires real mastery but at the same time a good deal of luck helps !!
Every work is not a masterpiece :one has to accept it, even though that makes one’s ego suffer !!
But, and that’s a consolation and my conclusion : all the paintings we carry out, good or less, are part of the necessary work we have to do in order to progress (and that’s what we want to. Isn’t it ???)