Les Oliviers - Série Paysages et matière, Circa 2023

Hervé Ganry  

As a teenager, I was as fascinated by the pictorial rendering of materials as the transparency of a veil or the lustrous aspect of velvet as by the Impressionists' ability to evoke a sense of tranquility in me.

My learning consisted of repeating infinitely, with all the techniques at my disposal, characters, animals, and landscapes using comic books as the essential source. Then studies and a profession led me to put away the brushes. About ten years ago, I started to try oil painting on canvas. Applied with a palette knife, by impasto or smoothing, in successive layers, this technique allows me to create volumes, sculpt the paint, and obtain relief effects as well as plays of shadow depending on the incidence of light. My favorite colors are green and blue enhanced by a deep black. Painting has imperceptibly taken a growing place in my life and I am constantly in the mental construction of the coming painting. It matures progressively, develops, improves. When it is ready to burst forth, I am no longer but one with the canvas and my painting knife, gliding over the canvas, which is no longer but the instrument for the materialization of this mental projection.