Memory and imagination are strange things. My last large format work on canvas was initially inspired by the memory of a deep abyss in which I fished as a child. I wanted to show the reflections of the rocks, the foliage and, above all, the sky in the dark water. Once I had incorporated them, these celestial reflections took precedence over the initial project, flooding it with the shimmer of a marine light that I had contemplated the day before. The original image had been replaced, mentally and then physically, by the fresh memory of the most recent image, but still leaving the first composition visible.
And sometimes a drawing changes and evolves depending on the tool or the moment. So, this woman is given a crest and a beak, or these stones take on human forms.
Identical leaps take me into different stylistic registers, sometimes in the same day.
If there is just one thing that unites them, it is texture. This is the case for works on canvas where the surfaces are woven and often treated with superimposed glazings, but it is even more evident when images are transferred to paper. Their impression depends on the density of the paint applied, the quality of the support and the direction or force of the gesture. This gives rise to swirls, clouds and natural-looking backgrounds that act as a counterpoint to a simplified drawing, and in the best cases, create a definitive harmony.
This search for immediacy reminds me of something said by Germain Bonel*, a warm man and a great instinctive painter: Ah…! Making a successful work out of a sketch in one go! 
I am also reminded of the title of a text that the poet Max Rouquette* wrote for the presentation of an exhibition by his friend Henri Frère*, namely A mon seul désir. The motto of the Lady of the Unicorn, which I am happy to adopt.

Sorède, July 2022

*Germain Bonel, Catalan painter,1913-2002
*Max Rouquette, Occitan writer,1908-2005
*Henri Frère, sculptor and painter, father of Sébastien,1908-1986