Flower power

As I was reading some notes by J.S.Sargent ( one of the painters I admire the most) I noticed that he said that painting flowers was a good exercise.
Exactly what I think too ( moderstly). Fruits are easier to approach , they offer you nice variations of shapes, contrasts and colors and they seem to guide you on a safe path.
Flowers show you their simple beauty but most of them hide traps and unexpected difficulties ...
Here are some I painted these last years.

A rose in my parent's in law's garden ( casein 50x50cm)

Daisies I collected on the road side in the same area ( casein 61x55cm)

Other flowers from the roadside ( casein 92x60cm)

I offered this painting to a person I was lucky enought o meet a couple of times in the Brandywine area.

Sunflowers look at the sun, they seem to look at you and finally they look at the earth.

(acrylic 92x60cm)

Two yellow beauties in Monet's garden in Giverny.

(casein 50x50cm)

Tutti frutti

I love the paintings of  Barbara Kacicek , she paints marvellous fruits, and rocks and other things.
I often check out her website and it is always a delight to see her new creations. I find her paintings so sensuous and I love the way she seems to pick up simple and ordinary subjects and  infuses  a strong and deep underlying  meaning.

I paint fruits differently , in a more ornamental manner certainly but I have pleasure doing it. My fruit paintings are amongst the ones I prefer in my production.
I have been including fruits paintings in my "collections" for quite some time now.

In 2003 I started with casein on a very absorbant lime wash base...

Apples I 90x62 cm

Apples II 90x62 cm

Basket I 90x62 cm

Basket II 90x62cm

Bergeade 50x50 cm

...then, in 2006, 2007  I  exhibited in a gallery in the US and I decided to work with acrylics on a gessoed background...

Cider  40x30cm

A good year  28x40cm

Ripe I 40x40cn

Ripe II 40x40cm

and finally a couple of years ago I started a new series with a mix of classical ornamentation and fragments of XVIIth centurey still lifes,   in casein for the ornament and oils for the fruits, like this one for example.

Grappa 150x85cm

Crazy french ...

This  post is about painting for fun.

         

     

Painting on pieces of cardboard boxes taped up together ...cheap.

                        

The subject is also cheap but mythical in France, the famous 2CV of Citroen, the most popular french car ever...

Lunchbreak...

I cannot tell if this was because of the nice red wine we had for lunch but we started getting really creative in the afternoon , Pascale, my wife suggested the old kitch wallpaper stuff and Pierre Aucante ( the guy holding the animal's head , photographer, writer and  museographer ) went into the attic and deciced to find a way of including his trophy in the painting ...

As we were having fun some other people were also very creative ...

This whole thing was in fact because of the yearly international gathering of 2 CV people in a nearby city.

For this unique occasion, the museum had exhibited two picturesque specimen of the french iconic automotive.

Here is the "painting" installed in the Museum of poaching ...this place is a lot of fun, we have done other paintings for them, I will post about them too...

Work in progress.

A work in progress is sometimes ( often?) more fascinating than a completed or finished piece. I suppose it comes from the fact that at some point , things are coming to life , they are fresh and full of energy. They are a vibrant expression of something happening in front of your eyes.

When this magic moment materializes ( it does not always, it depends on what you paint) I grab my camera and I take a picture.

Here are some of these fleating moments I captured.

Most of these paintings are copies or interpretations of the "Tiepolos" ( Giambattista ,the father, and Giandomenico ,the son).

I am presently painting a ceiling with a whole bunch of figures of Tiepolo and I still enjoy learning to see through the eyes of such inspired and dedicated painters.

Five Cherubs

Last year, at Maison et Objet a designer of Mis en Demeure stopped on my booth and told me about a project in Germany.

Baroque ceiling with cherubs.

I made a sketch, proposed a quotation , both were accepted.

I was very happy to work for them . They are one of the big players at Maison et Obket and I have always admired the elegance of their furniture and decoration style.

After this I was given very precise instructions about the colors, contrasts, number of cherubs and exact location of them to the centimeter.

I did the painting in my studio and hired my friend Malek to do the gilding and help me with the installation.

The house is located in a small german town of the "black forest" , quiet and romantic.

Having researched a little bit about this villa I discovered that it had been build by the famous portrait painter Franz-Xaver Winterhalter.

It impressed me. I thought to myself that if I had known that earlier it would have changed my approach of the painting.

I always try my best but on this particular mural I felt a little trapped by the strict requirements of the designers and I was not totally satisfied with the result ( I am never anyway).

The villa does not feel very impressive when you arrive but is much bigger than ot looks at first sight..

The first thing we did was to install our primitive ( but not stupid) "stand" in the center of the ceiling just to check out the dimension of our wooden"sticks".

Next we installed the canvas as you see on the picture.

Then we glued up one half of the ceiling and appled the canvas.

Finally we repeated the same operation on the rest of the canvas.

The whole thing went smooth and took hardly more than two hours.

The next  day we trimmed the extra canvas along the molding and painted the sky in the inside of the big cornice.

Then Malek did the gilding with a little help on my part.

Then we removed the scaffolding boards to take a couple of pictures.

They had wanted me to paint five cherubs in this ceiling.

As I was walking in the park of the villa I noticed that there were five nice statues of cherubs...five outside,five inside...