Jacques Martin

Native of Pays de la Loire, Jacques Martin lives and works in Nantes. This self-taught painter learned to know himself by trying many materials including watercolors, but his desire for contrast soon leds him to use gouache and sometimes oil. These tools allow him to accurately transcribe the landscapes that he has photographed during his various trips to Spain and particularly to the United States.

His work is characterized by the representation of abandoned landscapes, industrial, innocuous places, which give us a feeling of fullness, absence. This feeling of deja vu (already seen) enables us to create a direct relationship with the people who looks at it, plunging the viewer into his own memories. He uses brown paint in all its shades and hues, but he does so with blue paint and green pigments as well, in a way to reveal the natural and authentic dimensions of the landscapes he depicts.

While Jacques Martin refused to expose the characters he portrayed, which according to him, lacked character, the painter finally decided and made an anonymous series, always searching to identify with the viewer through the stories he tells us.