Michel Le Déroff

The manipulation of brushes and the use of pigments is only the last act of an imperious desire to combine shapes and colors: pictorial technique and intellectual approach are intimately mixed. A black and white photocopy of the (figurative) subject or of a fraction of it is the starting point of a search for an extension which will gradually slide towards something else. Brushes saturated with India ink, black markers of varying size, blanco ... are used instinctively. In this essential phase, only the dark / light relationships, the coherence of the lines / spots networks guide me. Often, I start again until the abstract and the concrete no longer oppose each other and combine to give more strength, more presence, an extra soul to what was already interesting by its form and its history. . Then, several tests of colored harmonies are carried out on models of small sizes, without concern of fidelity to the precision of the subject. One of them is validated as the best. It will be transferred to the canvas, this time with its conforming and enlarged structure, in gray pencil ... Finally, the painting will be done, will live ... It is a great phase of intense concentration that begins. I withdraw from the world ... The colors are then juxtaposed, superimposed, diluted, scratched, masked, applied in juice or in full material until obtaining visual satisfaction (serene balance, fluid coherence). Sometimes the connections, the transitions, the desired limits, are broken ... The accident, the unforeseen situation can then resonate with the work in progress; a new dynamic sets in ... ... My face to face with the canvas lasts until experiencing the intimate feeling of osmosis between the pictorial structure and my sensations ...