My Artistic Evolution

I’m used to say I’m born with a color pencil in my hand! You guess it’s not exactly true, but in a better world perhaps it could be! As a matter of fact, as far as I can remember, I’ve always drawn and painted.

When the time came for making a decisive choice, I considered going to the Art School. Unfortunately, my classmates and all my teachers didn’t consider an artistic career was respectable enough, so I did medicine.

When he ceased to work, my grand father became a weekend oil painter. I was fascinated by all his color tubes. At his death, I inherited his paint box. That was the beginning of my passion for oil painting.

I don’t remember why and when I began to draw and to paint in a surrealistic manner. I painted my first surrealist oil on canvas in October 1956 (40 × 50 cm = 15.75 × 19.7").

OK! No technique at all! Colors too saturated. The rainbow looks like a cardboard one...

Now the second painting, made some months later (February 1957 — same format). It’s a little bit better already.

As you’ve just seen, at the beginning I didn’t have any technique and always painted my pictures in one layer, beginning at the top right hand corner of the canvas, and ending on the bottom right hand side.

At the world fair in Brussels in 1958, I was very impressed by the paintings of Salvador Dali, particularly his “Christ of St. John of the Cross” and “Santiago the Great”, I realized these chef-d’œuvres were painted in another way than what I was doing at that time.

So, gradually, going to the art galleries and museums, and reading technical books on painting, I learned by myself the true technique of the masters. (See Technical Information, How I came to guess their secret).

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