I had a great pleasure to intervene all year 2019 in the therapeutic painting workshop of the Hospital of Morlaix, for the Stand-Arts association.
A big thank you to all the participants of the two groups, to the team of nursing referents and to the management of the hospital and the association. This very beautiful experience gave rise to several exhibitions in which the works were presented to the public, at the town hall of Morlaix, at the EHPAD Mont-Leroux in Huelgoat as well as at the Saint-Michel residence in Plougourvest.
It is a real pleasure to lead the ATA painting workshop since January 2019 and to practice, at each session, a simple and spontaneous painting experience. These first months were an opportunity to share my plastic research, which is usually reserved for my own studio. Above all, they were a way for the patients to appropriate my proposal and to restore, each in their own way, painted emotions whose beauty I hope people will appreciate.
We use acrylic paint, which mixes with water. This has many advantages, including great ease of use, but also disadvantages, such as drying very quickly, too quickly for my taste, and making it difficult to create texture or material effects without adding specific, expensive and chemical products. It is from these observations that I have been experimenting for about ten years with a painting technique which consists in using, in addition to paint, absorbent paper. The paper will absorb the water and slow down the drying while guaranteeing adhesion of the assembly to the support. Indeed, the water, which serves as a vector for the paint, will soak the paper and carry the paint with it. As it dries, the mixture will form a textured crust, capable of receiving paint or water again, but also likely to be peeled off or even torn off.
The work is therefore carried out in successive layers, a drying time being necessary between each session, where the paintings on paper must be put in the press. At each session, therefore, a dialogue begins between us and the paintings on what was done the previous time, on the way in which the perception was modified by the drying, but also by the mood of the day, by what it is necessary or not to bring to improve the unit, by the interrogation “is it finished or not? ".
The so-called abstract approach to my own work is not imposed, even if a majority have chosen to follow it. The main theme was the landscape, to be understood and considered in the broad sense (geographical, traditional, dreamlike, mental landscape, etc.). The constraint was to apprehend the warm colors or the cold colors. The general intention is to release emotion, without locking the viewer into a restricted interpretation. I find it successful, congratulations to all!