Contre jour 1, 2006

Jacques Le Brusq  

The artist was born in 1938 in Rennes. Between 1970 and 1977, he created and ran an art centre in Morbihan, La Cour de Bovrel, in Saint Guyomard. He also taught at the Rennes School of Fine Arts from 1973 to 2000. He has lived and worked in Nantes since 1990.

His approach is nourished by philosophy and poetic thought, and by a long immersion in the plant and mineral kingdoms.

The paintings of the 1980s were therefore devoted to the figure of the tree. In the depths of the undergrowth, the tree is a figure whose verticality imposes itself on us, while at the same time never ceasing to escape us. The top lost in the canopy, only the foot faces us. An isolated figure, yet anonymous in the multitude, as we approach, the trunk stands out from the wooded space to which it belongs. "A tree always faces us", the painter tells us. In order to portray the plant, he must make himself available, commit himself, take part in the landscape. The foot of a tree is also a space covered with moss and lichen, which the light can only reach after being filtered. Green is everywhere and is the dominant colour in the painter's palette. The space then widens and expands. In the 1990s, the painter found himself faced with a new landscape, that of the infinite spaces and vast expanses of the plains of the Beauce. To tame this immensity, immersion is once again necessary. Although he now works in the studio, the search remains the same. That of a presence, of an obviousness, of a felt emotion. To capture this expanse bathed in light, this "bare earth", the painter proceeds by successive shots that create a mysterious, almost unreal depth.

In 2010, Jacques Le Brusq returns to Brittany and the Rhuys peninsula in particular. Once again, confrontation with the landscape, with the light. The artist often paints against the light in order to make the details disappear and retain only the essential. Beyond the materiality of the motif, it is the idea of its very presence that is the subject: "I was trying to give birth to painting, to the unexpected that occurs and that cannot be thought of", he says.

Find this artist in many more in our collection of works by artists inspired by Rothko.