We came to interview crime novel writers, and as soon as we entered the room, we were struck by a canvas that reflects a man full of life. This man is Ray Charles. Seeing him in painting, right in front of us, we quickly forget that it’s only a painting. It appears so alive, and if one listens carefully, one gets the impression of hearing him sing. Magic!
Nice-Premium: But who is the author of this magic?
Patrick de Beaussier: Born in Paris which I adore, but viscerally from Nice for ages. I’ve had ten jobs, but I’ve always drawn. Music is my oxygen, my wife and children my drive and my joy. Women… what a wonderful enigma, the city a passion, encounters an eternal daily journey.
N-P: How do you work to make a canvas so alive?
P.D.B.: First I must love the subject I’m going to paint, I must immerse myself in it, let it consume me; for portraits, I take photos, redraw them, rework them on a graphics tablet and arrive at a paper work that I then use to create my acrylic or silkscreen ink canvases. Or else, it’s drawing and Chinese ink for imaginary subjects.
N-P: An original method these colors you use in your “jazzy” paintings!
P.D.B.: Jazz is color, shimmer, the canvas must vibrate, one must hear it, it must burst like a riff, it must “swing” or “blues,” it must laugh or cry. Color must be emotion.
N-P: These “jazz” artists, it seems you’ve even rubbed shoulders with them, even the great Ray Charles!!!
P.D.B.: That was a few years ago in Juan at one of his last concerts on the coast, we had slipped into the “back stage” with a photographer friend, and, without him seeing me (obviously) or understanding me (I don’t speak a word of English), I managed to make him laugh by singing “What I Say” in… yogurt with the voice of Louis Armstrong. He told me he loved “crazys” especially when they smelled of “Habit Rouge” by Guerlain (my eau de toilette at the time), so I went ahead and improvised “Georgia” in my onomatopoetic way!!!
N-P: These colors are also used in your new exhibition. Tell us a bit about it?
P.D.B.: After being invited to the Juan jazz festival this summer. I just exhibited “New York” at the Eden Casino and the Meridien all of September. I am viscerally urban and “The Big Apple” is a fascinating and varied subject. Painting this city was a great emotion for me. This project started from a trip I took with Nathalie, my wife, for whom I had secretly drawn a travel journal that I gave her. From these Chinese ink drawings was born a few years later this New York collection that led to this exhibition of large format canvases where color explodes for the extravagance of this wonderful megalopolis.
N-P: Besides colorful canvases, you have also painted rather dark canvases. Does this contrast have a link to a mood of the day?
P.D.B.: No, the darker canvases are older. Two years ago I underwent a very major surgical operation and following this event, there was a profound change in me, a rebirth, which resulted in a colorful exuberance, a joy in the nuances and tones that I didn’t have before.
N-P: Actually, how does the idea come that tomorrow you will paint this portrait rather than another?
P.D.B.: I have very erratic sleep, I think a lot at night and create enormously. I have a thousand projects that assail me and I try during the day to put them on paper and canvas.
N-P: Another theme addressed, women.
P.D.B.: What could be more beautiful than this subject, whether daughter, sister, mother, stranger, woman is mysterious, attractive or irritating, amazing, concrete, abstract, intriguing, gentle or violent, shy or extroverted, exuberant or secret but her mystery fascinates me and I love to paint and draw women because they are fantastic and their face is the most beautiful of landscapes.
N-P: That’s lovely. Why African women?
P.D.B.: Africa is the next theme of my work and it’s true that the first drawings are of African women because they have a natural distinction, a bearing that belongs only to them. In often difficult daily life, they manage to keep a grace, a bearing, a pride and a courage that deserves great respect, but there won’t be only women in my work and Africa is a vast crucible for the imagination and I hope to be “marabout” in the good sense of the term by this continent.
N-P: By visiting your site, we notice that Patrick de Beaussier is not only a painter, but also a sculptor, poet and writer. In two words: an artist!
P.D.B.: Artist, perhaps, artisan, certainly, but above all a dabbler in everything, a lover of beauty, curious about all the senses: the visual, listening, smell excite and challenge me. I am an inventive tactile person, a passionate epicurean. I love words, the French language and above all humor.
N-P: I stop on a very poignant sculpture titled “Liberty Looking at the World,” sad truth.
P.D.B.: It’s a sculpture I created a few years ago, and, unfortunately, it is always, and increasingly relevant. In many countries of the world it’s pathetic because freedom is shrinking day by day. For us Westerners, I increasingly have the impression that a “Big Brother” is taking care to draw very straight furrows, where fantasy, imagination, individuality, difference, will soon no longer have the right to exist.
N-P: Let’s return to a lighter note, tomorrow your “New York” canvases made in Blausasc will fly to the United States!!! Proud?
P.D.B.: This project is close to my heart, but as long as everything isn’t “tied up,” mum’s the word… and let’s keep our fingers crossed!
N-P: To finish, if tomorrow you were asked to put one of your works on the cover of our web daily, which painting would you put forward, why?
P.D.B.: The Statue of Liberty, because it has represented all the hopes for millions of men: it is the symbol of an immense surge of courage for so many beings searching for an ideal life, a better world… and besides it’s still the work of a Frenchman 😉
To discover these canvases, we invite you to surf virtually on his website: https://www.debeaussier.fr/
But also to surf in a village called Tourettes-sur-Loup at the Relais des Coches, where an exhibition of Patrick De Beaussier’s works will dazzle you.
Patrick de Beaussier
1 ch. des Escaillons
06440 BLAUSASC
Tel. 33 (0)4 97 20 10 24
Mobile 33 (0)6 10 28 30 28
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