Presentation of the artist

Presentation of the painter Jean-Luc GAILLARD known as JLG painter

Born in Paris 14th on 30 January 1948 Df

What would be the best way to leave an imprint of our ephemeral passage on this earth? Children, I grant you, have been one of my first concerns and I have assumed the descendants. But unfortunately for them too, this only lasts for a time. So how to triumph over this fleeting life? I realised that, out of the comedy and macabre dance of human life, there was one thing that remained, that survived, the artistic work. It too perishes one day, it is consumed, broken. But all the same it survives many human lives and continues, beyond the passing moment.

So I tried it in 1998, to satisfy my curiosity and to test the artistic expression that I felt was developing in me over time. This is how I made my first three oil paintings. After this unpretentious but reassuring experience for my neophyte eye, I put my brushes away and had to wait for family and professional life to give me a little more time. It is thus at the time of retirement (beginning of 2011), thus late, and rather naturally, that painting became for me a means of expression, a language and a very personal poetry which makes emerge messages buried inside, which must be free and detached from any judgment.

For me, this need to paint is a blessing, it evacuates the mediocrity and disenchantment of everyday life. It is really a plenitude, a form of meditation, or rather a meditation where an emotion springs up that I let out and that I transpose to the end of my brushes. This is how my inner language is expressed, where bits and pieces of my experience emerge and are stretched out.

This new path brings me a lot despite the technical difficulties I still face today. This practice proves to me that one has to be tenacious, to work unceasingly to improve and that nothing is really acquired as I thought.

Today I have gained confidence thanks to the kindness of Jean-François Courteaux who taught me at the Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris, for 3 years, from 2012 to 2015 and to the many painter friends that I meet. Painting for me has become a means of escape from this life of professional inactivity, to keep a mode of expression and sharing. Is it possible to imagine that a work of art can deliver a message without worrying about providing a minimum of pleasure to those for whom it is intended? I like my paintings to be seen, criticized, even misunderstood and disturbing.

For me art must be in movement, in effervescence and constantly questioned, I try to do this and hope to surprise more and more. In any case I continue with great enthusiasm and pleasure to manipulate this material that is painting.

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Jean-Luc Gaillard in his studio

Jean-Luc Gaillard in his studio

Date de dernière mise à jour : 13/04/2022