Madiba, 2021

Baccalaureate. Preparatory classes. Business school. I was a good little soldier. A pure product of French education.

Intern. FIXED-TERM CONTRACT. PERMANENT CONTRACT. Spent five years of not much in the eyes of the big boss, with almost nothing in the wine industry. I was, for a time, a docile element in the service of the food industry.

So, at 27, I decided to fight my own battles. "Art is more important than life" said someone who was brighter than me.

On the morning of February 11, 2002 I gave my life a different colour. Here I am as a painter, investing my 6 square meter garage in the Hérault region. Far from my land in Gironde. "The self-taught school is the only one that will never close," a collector confided to me in the hollow of his ear one evening at the opening. I liked this image.

Long a victim of the usurper syndrome, it took me many years to find this famous "style" and believe in the value of my path. I hope I have succeeded today, but it's up to you to judge, isn't it? Today it represents 18 years of explorations, immense solitudes confronted, thousands of hours of music listened to, liters of drinks of all kinds consumed and almost 2000 canvases covered with used paper, oils empaté, scraped, smoothed.

Stains, drips, streaks, stencils, flat spots I experimented everything to come up with this mixture of oil and spray. New York taxis, Provençal markets or café terraces, these are the landscapes that brought me step by step to you my friend the lion....

Today we are in 2020 and I owe it all to you who are reading these few lines. I am daydreaming thanks to you. Thank you for allowing me to follow this beautiful but so short path.

Give me 10 lives and I will fill them with passion for you. Just for the pleasure of hearing your words and watching your smiles. It's already 2021 and I still can't read or write but just spell. I am still an apprentice of the life of an artist.