PAINTING
Human beings are rarely consistent. Luckily. My figures don’t behave either. Some are tender. Some are dramatic. Some look like they’ve stepped out of a geometry lesson. Others escaped from a color storm. Pop art shakes hands with expressionism. Elegance meets exaggeration. A nose may grow unexpectedly. A face might carry two opinions at once. These are not portraits. They are variations. Different attitudes. Different temperatures. Different ways of occupying the same fragile human space. Serious — but not too serious. Expressive — but never fixed. The spectrum is wide. That’s the point. — Sof
I don’t paint perfect bodies. I paint resistance. Lines tremble. They slip. They collide. Paint runs. Black cuts through color. The figure almost falls apart. These bodies hover between dignity and absurdity. They try to stand. Sometimes they succeed. Sometimes they dissolve. I am interested in that fragile moment — when the image nearly collapses, but doesn’t. That is where it breathes. No glamour. No correction. Just the human attempt to remain upright.
Here, I don’t hide behind the line. Colour speaks first. It stains. It interrupts. It insists. The body is no longer structure. It becomes pulse. Heat. Friction. Sometimes tender. Sometimes excessive. Sometimes ironic without asking permission. Paint runs because emotion runs. Nothing is corrected. I don’t paint beauty. I paint presence. Sometimes tender. Sometimes too much. Sometimes ironic without asking permission. Paint runs because emotion runs. Nothing is corrected. I don’t paint beauty. I paint presence.
Inner Music - For several years, I have been working on original vintage music sheets — some dating back to 1910 — from France, England, and Germany. I do not cover these scores. I enter into dialogue with them. Dates, titles, and musical indications remain visible: Animé et tumultueux, Erinnerung, Semper Fidelis, La fille aux cheveux de lin… These printed words become partners in the composition. The figures emerge from the rhythm of the staff lines. They are not illustrations. They listen. Ink moves like improvisation. Colour breathes between the measures. There is inner music. Joy. And always a subtle sense of humour. These works are contemporary variations on historical sound memory — a conversation between printed past and present gesture. — Sof
Some paintings politely choose a top and a bottom. Mine hesitate. Turn them. Rotate them. Let them change their mind. A face might smile. Then frown. Then become something entirely different. The canvas doesn’t mind. It enjoys the confusion. There is no correct direction — only different attitudes. The image stays the same. You don’t. — Sof
I do not paint landscapes. I paint weather. Moisture, light, wind, blooming and dissolving. Nature is not scenery — it is a breathing state.
Faces. Silence. Distance. Moments suspended in time. These works belong to another chapter — but they still breathe.
