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"I long for eternity because there I shall meet my unwritten poems and my unpainted pictures".
Khalil Gibran, Sand and Foam (1926)

Who am I ?

I have been attracted to painting as an art form since the age of seven.

Strangely, it is the french - and later english - romantic poetry, which drove me to drawing and painting and to my passion for colours : Charles Baudelaire, Théodore de Banville, Alphonse de Lamartine, Victor Hugo, John Keats, William Blake and other poets fro the second part of the 19th century...

"Nature is a temple in which living pillars
Sometimes give voice to confused words;
Man passes there through forests of symbols
Which look at him with understanding eyes.

Like prolonged echoes mingling in the distance
In a deep and tenebrous unity,
Vast as the dark of night and as the light of day,
Perfumes, sounds, and colors correspond."

Charles Baudelaire, Correspondences, The Flowers of Evil (1861)
Translation : © William Aggeler

Indeed, the symbolic association of words and colours in their clever use of metaphors, circumlocutions and other surrealistic images, fascinated me. Especially everyday expressions and idioms such as : to do something "once in a blue moon", to come "out of the blue", to show "one's true colours", "to feel blue", to be "in the pink", to be "black and blue", to have a "blackhead", to tell "white lies",  to have a "yellow streak", to be "green with envy", to "paint the town red", to use one's "gray matter", to be "yellow-bellied", to be "caught red-handed", and so on...

At first, inspiration drawn from such expressions drove me to write poetry. Then it went on to feed my imagination, and convinced me that painting, which allows the use of the widest possible choice of colours and shades, is not only an art form, but beyond this a language in itself ! Granted, a language without a voice, but unencumbered by the limitations of that voice – an art form which gave me complete freedom of expression.

I started painting, teaching myself, when I was 17. In those days, I was essentially copying materials found in books and magazines, trying to understand the basics of this form of expression and of its infinite potential. I started expressing myself in earnest through painting at the age of 27.

"You must become who you are. Do what you only can do !"
Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883–1885)

After 10 years spent living as a "workaholic" to earn my living, unable to find time to touch a single brush, I constituted my first personal collections. Today, I know that I will never more be able to spend one day without painting or drawing !

I have been working as a professional painter affiliated to French organization "Maison des Artistes".

My technique : "painting stories"...

With the exception of my “Celestial Visions” collection, I usually sketch my paintings in crayon, before using colour. This helps me to respect proportions, create harmony and get a feeling as to what the final result will look like.

Although I have heard praises sung for oil painting, I almost invariably paint with acrylic. Why is this ?

Well, principally because :

• First and foremost, acrylic paint is totally environmentally–friendly, and (particularly as my current main source of inspiration hovers above the Ozone layer...) because I am concerned with the respect and protection of our environment. Acrylic paint can be used simply with water, and I always use a finishing coat made up of 80% natural resin. I never use chemicals or solvents, which would be almost impossible to do if I were painting solely with oil ;
  
• Also, acrylic paint is flexible and easy to work with, and it has a quick drying time (between 1 and 3 hours, depending on the thickness of the paint). This is wonderful for me, as I can keep adding layers, while inspiration is still with me ! In the days when I was experimenting with oil, the flame of Inspiration was only truly there during the original sketch and initial colour layer stage. Coming back to my painting a couple of weeks later, once the paint had had a chance to dry completely, I invariably found it impossible to recapture my original emotions and ideas, or recreate the exact shades or colours I had in mind. They were by then but a memory and no more accessible than a dream... I therefore much prefer using a type of paint which allows me to express my feelings in full, without losing any of the fleeting magic of the original inspiration.
  
• Finally, acrylic paint offers almost endless possibilities in terms of creating shades and colours. Each and every one of them has a special meaning for me – just as a writer or poet would seek to use subtle words and nuances, rather than generic terms, when describing their feelings or a particular environment.

Although I do sometimes use iridescent gel to create shimmering effects, I very rarely mix my colours with other components ; I like to work with them in their natural, original state, before creating nuances and shades by adding water in successive layers, a technique similar to that used when working in watercolour. I particularly like the wash-paint effect this creates, and the dream-like, poetic, mysterious and almost surreal character this gives to my paintings.

Because acrylic paint dries quickly, I work by superimposing colours in ever lighter and thinner layers, to create transparency and light. In the final stage, I add stronger, more vivid colours to enhance these soft, subtly faded shades, create contrasts and give depth to the painting.

My main subjects and themes are the sky, landscapes, birds and flowers, as well as women. In my paintings, I do not so much seek to represent reality as to convey emotions, by painting expressive faces and eyes and a “romantic” outlook on life, in the literary sense of the word.

I have made a conscious choice never - or only exceptionally- to represent shadows, as I like to believe that light is omnipresent, that it shines from everywhere at once. In fact, I do not get on at all with shadows and perspective. While the Cubists used to view the world in 3 dimensions, my vision of it is one-dimensional, as it would present itself in a dream.

It is for me as if landscapes had already been laid onto a sheet of paper or canvas, as if my subjects' expressions had been captured in an instant, then fixed for eternity on paper, as on a photograph. I actually paint almost as if I were taking a photograph : when inspiration suggests a new idea, I imagine the finished painting, framed and hanging on the wall. I then immediately give it a name, to fix the concept in my memory. Then I put colour to canvas. The original idea sometimes gets altered, but I generally try to represent it faithfully.

Although I use a very wide range of colours, blue (and more particularly turquoise blue) is an underlying thread in most of my paintings. It is the colour of the sea, and also of the sky, an endless source of wonder to me. I love the sky, for it belongs to everyone, yet no-one can claim ownership of it ! It is a place without boundaries, perfect, harmonious, inaccessible and a constant source of inspiration ; a place between the past and the future, where imagination can flow freely.

Finally, I like painting in itself, as much as I like creating stories. My paintings are therefore always conceived as if I were writing a detective story : each painting tells a story, and the beholder must find the key to its enigma and its particular message – which are generally to be found in the name of the painting !

To use André Gide's words, therefore, dear visitor, “let beauty be in the eye of the beholder, rather than that which is beheld”.

For further information, please connect to : www.e-bousquet.com

Thanks for spending some time in my universe...

Best Regards,

Eliora