My Story
I would start by saying that I am a Portrait Painter , French by birth, Italian by my ancestors. I make exhibitions for Christmas or other events in Shopping Centers to sell my portraits that I realize from photos. I am used and love to paint from sitting which led me to exhibit for more than 30 years at summer season. There, I have the opportunity to realize live portraits. My work is famous and appreciated for its quality since many years. From my beginnings as a professional, I wanted to develop a very personal style using the technique of pastel on velour paper, a rare and difficult technique. After my studies (Architecture) I stopped everything to get into what I thought to be a gift; The Portrait. At first it was to pay for my studies but it quickly became my passion and my job.
The choice of pastel became an evidence when I was 16 years old, I came across a calendar signed by an Italian painter representing 12 beautiful portraits of women and children done with pastel. It fell in love with this medium at first sight. After several years of improvement, a lot of self-portraits, sketches from photos and poses, I decided to consider my passion with a more professional approach.
I started my first season in La Grande Motte, in the south of France. At that time, I was asked more Sepia Portraits than Pastels Portraits and it was better for me because my hands were shaking during every Portrait, I felt so uncomfortable painting with a big audience behind me, everybody judging the accuracy of every single strokes on the paper. The portrait in Sepia was much faster, a sketch worked with pastel pencils, enhanced by areas of light.
The art of the portrait from live is a difficult challenge if not the most difficult to practice and surely the most amazing on the marinas of all Europe in summer and of course at La Place du Tertre in Montmartre, in the heart of Paris. That’s why, if the artist is talented, you can see more than a hundred people around him until the end of this amazing show.
I noticed that a lot of tourists came back every night to watch me painting for several hours.
In fact, working this way is more of a performance than working in a workshop. No hints, no cheating, you reveal everything. People likes that. Even if I work a lot from photos, the sitting gives more freedom to the artist, I definitely love it.
My desire to travel and to practice my art in different places around the world led me to the French West Indies, in St Martin. I had my workshop in the Dutch side, I’been there for seven years. During this period I realized how much the America people loved my work. Unfortunately, after 2 huge hurricanes, I had to leave this paradise back to France. It was in 2001, Since then, I have exhibited in England, Belgium, Portugal, Russia and Brazil.
Year after year during my exhibitions, I met at different places, people from different countries, all sharing the same interest for my technique and the questions that come up again and again: Do I teach, and how to keep in touch ?
To answer the first question, I decided to put on my Youtube channel videos explaining my technic, more are coming soon. This is the first reason why I made this site. I wanted all my customers and artists to stay in touch with me , no matter where they are located, so I am able to help them with problem concerning their portrait, if any, and finally facilitate order process from everywhere during the holiday periods, especially during summer and Christmas time.
My art is at the service of people who trust me and I’d like to offer to anyone around the world the opportunity to have a great Portrait at a reasonable price.
