Jérôme Guillet

At the age of fifteen, Jérôme experienced artistic creation through the meticulous activity of designing and creating scenes and colouring the fantasy figurines used in board games. Fascinated by the works of painters of the Dutch school – and more specifically by the chiaroscuro techniques admirably mastered by Rembrandt (1606-1669) and Vermeer (1632-1675), the young artist tried to “recreate this atmosphere in [his] playlets"" which won several prizes in local and national competitions. This passion turned out to be highly instructive and helped him understand all the facets of pictorial art, right from learning the basics of oil painting to understanding chromatic properties.

Later on, by experimenting with different styles and techniques, the self-taught painter learned to get rid of certain restrictive aspects to better implement the freedom in his technique and to spontaneously represent his emotions on the material. The idea of a city drawn as an abstract landscape originated when he discovered the works of the artist Daniel Castan (born in 1959), whose interpretations of New York he admired.

Creating his backdrops using acrylic paints, Jérôme uses his brushes and spatulas covered with oil paint to sketch his subjects. Somewhere between figurative art and abstract art, his nocturnal urban landscapes consist of a succession of scattered shadings with several splashes of colour intended to attract the viewer’s attention. Playing with perspectives and reflections gives him great joy, which he in turn loves to share with his public. In their eternal quest for beauty, Jérôme’s canvases seek to transport the viewer to a place far away.