Patrick Castillon

Patrick Castillon was born on April 5th 1950 in Touffailles in Tarn et Garonne. He grew up in Arcachon and lives since 12 years in the nearby town La Teste de Buch. His first employer had told him : "If you want learn to work, you'll often have to change your boss, the more people you meet, the more you learn.". So, Patrick Castillon had nineteen bosses before to become officer.

After a ceramist training in 1977, he becomes artisan potter in Arcachon. This experience lasts three years, he gains money, but to sell he had to be well placed and to be well placed he had to pay a big rent. The importance of this rent destroys his accounts and elections of 1981 destroys his tenacity. No matter, in the meantime he teaches pottery classes at the youth centre of Arcachon. Finally, he is appointed in 1985.

The relation with sculpture doesn't seem obvious. However, pottery curves and the shape of a breast or a buttock are closely linked. The eye became accustomed, the eye educated himself, the eye learned, the eye leads the hand.

Initially was a welding point, that reminded him of the tip of a woman's breast. This welding point walked in his head during 20 years, and finally the ceramic technique of the colombin becomes an obvious. Pieces of reinforcing steel are assembled side by side and welded to electric welding. The big difference is that colombins are shaped after welding while the concrete irons are formed before being welded. The modification after welding remains minimal and delicate.

Its technique allows him to express his passion for contrasts : no more constraints of shapes or dimensions. The use of a common material for sculpting, the heaviness of iron to sublimate women's bodies and the lightness of dance. The interior burn by welding and the exterior shiny and polished by the disc maker, all is pretext to contrast.

His sculptures mainly represents women. "I don't just love women, I admire them!". "As I don't know draw, I take pictures. So, my studio looks like a truck driver's cab, but I assume : for me nothing is more beautiful than a woman's naked body, her beasts, her buttocks, her hips...".