Techniques: From Analogue to Digital

The example of the Octopus

“I started as a traditional printmaker…”

My friends tell me that I have a talent for techniques. I love learning new ones, play with materials and tools. It’s fun to get your hands dirty, like a kid who never gets in trouble. I see my work as a constant research and improvement. Always digging deeper to unearth secrets within the materials, I play with oils and acrylics, but also collage, printmaking, stained glass, digital painting, beeswax.

I started as a traditional printmaker 30 years ago, working on copper, zinc, lino or wood. I loved to experiment with layers, textures, colors. I approach my paintings in the same manner.

My paintings always start with multiple layers of paper of all sorts; newspaper, wrapping paper, silk paper, pattern paper etc… In between layers, I print with, or leave in, all types of materials recycled and found, like plastics, fibers, or metals. Waste that would take years to break down and disappear in a landfill. I like to leave on the canvas a lot of different textures.

When the texturing is over but still wet I add the background colors by layering them. I spray, drop, imprint, paint the colors on top of each other, going from opaque to transparent. While the work is drying, the colors find their place and settle in. Colors and textures embrace each other and make one. This first part of the work, completely abstract, is very liberating, like a moving meditation. The technical process applied to this series is inspired by the oceans and the issues raised by the pollution produced by large cities like San Francisco, Amsterdam or New York. It’s also my way to show how our surrounding affect us, the background shows up under the figure, the way life leaves its mark on us.

When it’s dry, I start working on the figurative part of the work. In order to do that I use some of my favorite stories, like “Alice in Wonderland” or “20,000 leagues under the sea”. My Alice and octopus take on multiple personas in a set of acrylic paintings, digital images, and mixed media pieces, a series about our schizophrenic lives in large metropolis.

I also started a “dreamlike” work series inside the Alice’s series. A alternate reality about the recurring floods around the planet, direct consequences of global warming.

In this series of work I mix images of a century ago with photos found in the news. I mix traditional and modern, digital and analog to try to reconnect the spectator with the scene he’s looking at. When we look at an old photograph, time gives a romantic patina to the event, we forget the suffering to only see the surrealism of the scene. When I started superimposing old and new images, the catastrophe took another dimension. The past became a witness of our limited memory and our inability to plan for long term future. Superimposition works as a revealer. As we look through the membranes of the image, we go back to the essential.