François Escalmel

HYPNOPEDIA

These new paintings flutter between lyrical abstraction and realistic representation. Populated by morphing figures and infused with a surreal sensibility, they often blur the frontier between the living and the inanimate. These shapeshifting monoliths stand stoically in mostly deserted surroundings, sentinels of a transient personality whose fire burns within.

Aesthetically, I take inspiration from 19th and early 20th century painting: recalibrating the “Nature Morte” with the ability to breathe, gnaw and stare back or pushing the “plein air” genre to an almost annihilation of pure energy. At the core of the experience is matter’s fragility, its changing moods, and impermanent nature.

To construct these delicate tales of Animism, I appropriate pieces of images found online by artists such as Edwin Landseer, Joaquin Sorolla, Salvador Dali and Edgar Degas. For me, returning to the past is an inspiring point of departure. Using photoshop as a tool, the various sources are altered and combined to create a new fiction that fits my intuitive needs. When the composition is locked then I paint the image in oil.

The ambiguous living sculptures of this new series delight in indirection. Like small porcelain figures or gigantic monuments, they conjure up an atmosphere of unsettling possibilities.
As a document, they are autobiographical snapshots that strive to elicit an emotional response.

Ask me Again, 2013
Oil on canvas
24 x 24 inches
Chamber Music, 2016
Oil on canvas
20 x 16 inches
Earth Afire, 2016
Oil on canvas
32 x 30 inches
Island in the sun, 2015
Oil on canvas
32 x 40 inches
Milkmaid and Jupiter, 2015
Oil on canvas
40 x 36 inches
Someday you’ll Call my Name, 2016
Oil on canvas
30 x 48 inches

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