La fille Laroche

This painting combines what is real and what is imagined. I was born and raised in Paris, but my parents, who lived in a tiny apartment, loved nature and the seaside, so we used to spend a month of vacation each year in Brittany. It was a camping on a farm very close to the water. It was there that I embarked on my first adventure on a sailboat with my father and, later, learned to sail alone at the age of fourteen. This attraction to complete freedom never ceased and during many years I used to tow a boat before, finally, I managed to buy a small house at the coast of Rance in Brittany. Now my sailboat awaits me there and helps me find inspiration during my short stay. It is where I take photographs of old boats that abound the Rance estuary. I am entirely self-taught and my painting technique sets me apart from other artists. I work in gloss paint, an industrial medium, and begin by painting a plywood surface with a uniform base in an off-white color. The medium allows me to achieve remarkably smooth surfaces. Each area of the composition is approached differently; sometimes I create textures by using several transparent layers while others are achieved by the use of a razor blade to scratch away the surface.