Do you draw from imagination completely?
I use very often references. At this stage of my development, I have a real need for accuracy. In fact, each drawing is as much an image from my imagination as an exercise in transcription, in order to understand with my eyes and my hands what the world is made of.
The female characters are always perfect and ideal like on a love novel covers.
I like the term love novel covers... It's the kind of expressions that critics used for decades to characterize the work of pulp illustrators like Frazetta or Finlay, before singing their praises when they discovered that the taste of the populace was more sure than their own. Well, women are for sure my heroines, so it's more than normal that I try to idealize them, right? Btw, if you look at my entire portfolio, you will see that I use different body type according to the needs of the story I want to tell. But hey, let’s say that in my drawings there is a majority of women with lines that correspond to mainstream, so what? For me they are just the figments of my imagination, not statements of political intent. By cons I can’t prevent anyone to read there his own agenda for whatever cause. But that reflect more the viewer mind than mine.
Why do you omit the men from your images?
Probably because they are incidental to the stories that interest me. It's a matter of perspective. In the Genesis, for example, in my opinion it is the presence of Eve that makes things interesting: imagine Adam alone ... no original sin, no Fall, none of which what makes what we are in the essence. Just a very thin book that begins with "God created the universe, the Earth and Adam" and ends with "they lived happily for eternity and had no children" ...
Who are the artists that influenced you?
The list has no end and I do no make any distinction between genres: for me, Louise Bourgeois is as inspiring as Milo Manara, Leonardo da Vinci as important as Giovanna Casotto, Anaïs Nin as beautiful Guy de Maupassant.... I certainly have a special interest in artists who worked on the outskirts of the official culture, such as in eroticism, because they choose to work without worrying about the recognition of their contemporaries. But in the field of drawing, there are also many contemporary artists who each new work leaves me speechless with admiration, such as Jared Muralt, Sparth, Ian Bertram, Vince and many others to whom I apologize for not quoting them here.
The images you produce are reminiscent of the dreamy classroom drawings.
I do not know exactly what do you mean by dreamy classroom drawings... But eventually drawing in class is exactly what I use to do. Like at meetings, when I’m bored – often - and I have discovered that I can better follow when my hands are busy drawing, it helps me focus... Vice versa, when I draw something I always listen to music or radio broadcasts. I really feed from the energy, ideas and atmospheres that emerge though sound. Recently I made such an attack of indigestion of Die Antwoord ...
Would want to illustrate a classic book, if yes which one?
Salammbo by Gustave Flaubert, but unfortunately Philippe Druillet did it already and, well, you don’t try to paint the Sixtine Chapel again after Michelangelo, right?... But, let’s say Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami would be a great task... An editor made me a proposal in that direction lately, but I do not know yet what title or author they will chose, so I guess I'll let myself be surprised ...
Who do you think enjoys your images more, men or women?
Can’t say, I get slightly more feedback from women but that does not mean anything ... I’m just happy that both seem to enjoy without seeking to make a gender discussion about it. Because, once again, it is not my intention: although the sexes are perhaps represented in an asymmetric way in my drawings, they are all there because they are complementary. Because they are a necessity.
