Simon Halimi

Simon Richard Halimi was born in Tunis on 2nd February 1943.
He left his homeland 20 years later for France.
In 1974, he was expatriated in Ivory Coast with frequent travel in central Africa and West. This requires him to maintain contact with his family and painting, many travel between Africa and France.
He has been painting since the 1960s and has produced thousands of works.
Since February 2003 he left Africa and dedicated himself fully to his art.

Meeting with the artist:

A work of art must allow itself to be viewed in a calm manner, with you letting your mind wander and allowing yourself to daydream.
All forms of creative and recreational cultural expression are or should be an invitation to travel. Music, literature, poetry, theater, cinema, painting, sculpture, photography, and so on, are no exceptions to this rule when they carry a stamp of sincerity.
An act of expression can only be authentic if it is not motivated by the constraints laid down by obligations, by recognition.

Painting, like other means of expression, is a cry, a feeling, a listening process, pain, joy... a realization or an epiphany to be shared with my family and friends and with people who go to my exhibitions.
In the former case I experience a real moment of sharing, a kind of osmosis. A work - irrespective of what it contains - is only successful as an act of expression if it contains life, something to think about, feelings a pathway to an exchange, an invitation concerning it and the observer.

If this communion takes place, then the work is a good one.
When the architecture of a work, its theme, the balance of forms and colors, the mobility or freedom of the eye, the seeing, and the thinking, are all present in a kind of harmony, there are no longer any obstacles between a work and us. After painting for more than 50 years, I have had many opportunities during the course of my exhibitions to express myself with visitors who wanted to go through the mirror of the initial visual impression of a painting. I find their uncertainties and their desire to know - more than just
view - touching. Other visitors view, sometimes view themselves, and then continue going around a gallery having ''read'' paintings in their own ways.

Some people cast a disinterested passing glance, and, very sure of themselves, continue on their way. These people are sometimes in the majority. After having worked in conjunction with several gallery-owners, exhibited my work in France and abroad, I have never agreed to sign a contract.

I never express myself on an imposed topic, work, based on an order, or work at a certain speed.
Art cannot be dictated, it cannot be ordered. Life, time, kindness, love, madness, freedom, money, politics, the mind, the heart, its opposite, popular and honest art, all of life's facets and asses became my life. They are my reflective and observational canvas in terms of the content of my paintings.

Developments, variations on forms have taken place, but never in relation to the basics of my process. On this journey, I came across ''sand'', which can be found on the surface of my paintings from 1966 to 1998 - and occasionally after 1998. We are made of dust, and must return to dust. Humbleness is a watchword which is included in one way or another, in my paintings, by means of signs or of small sentences, and this is notably the case in relation to topics addressed concerning covetousness, temptation, greed, selfishness, hypocrisy, success at any price, lying, power, money, art for money's sake people, and so forth. I hesitated a very long time before writing about my painting. I believed that doing so was a bit like usurping the role of the ''watchers'', those people who prefer to have their own interpretation, and prefer to take the tome to uncover, in the meanders of my handwriting and my short sentences, the keys, crucial details and symbols in my works - what is hiding behind the initial image.

When you read a good book or listen to music, you do not make decisions based on the title of the book or on the first note of music - you cannot fall in love in three minutes and love does not last three minutes, it must be devoured, shared. For me a painting has never been a decorative object, I don't know how to produce
paintings like that. Other people do that kind of painting much better than I ever could.

They are on a different journey. A successfully completed piece of work awakens the senses and the consciousness. I owe a large proportion of my work - in fact almost all of it - to others. I have no imagination, I observe life, and above all I listen. The starting- point is often when you listen. It comes in through the ears, goes into the heart, then through the head, before reaching its destination in the hand.
When that happens, the painting is finished, there's no more searching to be done, the work comes out on canvas almost mechanically, without you thinking. There are no second chances in my painting, my painting is often based on the first impulse, the first instinct that comes to me.

Development has come about by me taking my time, my vocabulary has gotten richer, lines and symbols are now always intentional, there is nothing random in my paintings, my work is not figuration libre (free figuration), it is rather ''singular expressionism'', ''l'' (the art of storytelling).
A painting is a look, a piece of music, a film... etc... except for the fact that a painting is unique and cannot be duplicated - I do not paint series of paintings. A finished painting gives way to the next, you need several lives to retell slices from lives.

A certificate of authenticity is delivered for every artwork from Snow Pearl gallery.

The artist's artworks are owned in private collections worldwide.