Thierry Bedel | Contemporary Artist: Artworks & Biography

A self-taught artist, Thierry had no plans to become an artist right away. He completed technical studies and worked as a locksmith for several years. He moved to Toulouse and then Nimes, where he trained as a merchandising designer. Meeting his wife, a painter, pushed him to become involved in art in the early 1980s. In 1995, he created a studio-gallery in Uzès (Gard) with her. He now lives and works in Saint-Bonnet-du-Gard.\n Thierry was first attracted by watercolour techniques, but his style evolved gradually and he began trying his hand at oil pastels and acrylic. Today, the artist uses his different techniques on paper. His artistic influences are many and varied. They oscillate between abstract and figurative art, modern and contemporary. He appreciates Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (French painter, nineteenth century), Egon Schiele (Austrian painter, twentieth century), Mathurin Méheut (Breton artist, twentieth century), Roger Bezombes or Maurice Esteve (French artists, twentieth century).\n His art is in the tradition of the great masters of the twentieth century. Lulled by the warmth of the south, his landscapes are reminiscent of the last years of Paul Cézanne’s work (French painter, twentieth century). His unstructured architectures are similar to the Cubism of Picasso (Spanish painter, twentieth century). His use of colour is reminiscent of the bold colour of Fauvists Matisse and Maurice de Vlaminck (French painters, nineteenth and twentieth centuries).\n An orange sky andblue shadows, Thierry does not want to recreate strict reality but a ""feeling"", much like the Impressionists. The artist’s technique participates in building this evocation. The softness of the pastels fits perfectly with the intoxicating atmosphere of the sunny landscapes. Figurative without being realist, the painter purifies his subject to its simplest form. Large areas of colour and some stylized details are enough to carry the viewer's imagination to a wheat field, a fishing port or the shaded village square of a small Provencal village.