My sources of inspiration

“Painting is the unchanging mirror of
all that is most beautiful in the universe”

Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, aka Ylipe

I like observing nature, people and all things that surround me ; despite the passing of time, everything remains a source of wonder and emotion for me. Always craving for new things to learn about or discover, I wish I were born during the Italian Renaissance, a "magical" period where everything was possible...

My main sources of inspiration are :

►►► The endless power of suggestion and symbolism of colours ; every colour conjures up a particular “world”, which when combined with other colours, can evolve and be transformed, endlessly ;

►►► Music, which is essential to my creative process :

		Jazz, particularly vocal jazz (Sarah Vaughan, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald,Bessie Smith, Diana Krall, Eva Cassidy, Norah Jones, Molly Johnson, Stacey Kent, Melody Gardot, Madeleine Peyroux, Sara Lazarus, Nathalie Cole, Lisa Ekdahl, Youn Sun Nah, Sophie Milman, Jane Monheit, Caecilie Norby, Renee Olstead, Jan Eisen, Fredrika Stahl, Susan Werner, Lizz Wright, Louis Armstrong, Frank Sinatra, Sidney Bechet, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Michael Bublé, Oscar Peterson,...)
		Classical Music (Johann Sebastian Bach, Ludwig van Beethoven, Gioachino Rossini, Frédéric Chopin, Antonio Vivaldi, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Giuseppe Verdi, Giacomo Puccini, Tomaso Albinoni and Felix Mendelssohn), particularly when this music is played by Isaac Stern, Sarah Chang, Itzhak Perlman, Anne Gastinel, Hélène Grimaud, Katrin Scholz, Nigel Kennedy or Yundi Li, great tenors : Luciano Pavarotti, Andrea Bocelli, Roberto Alagna, Placido Domingo,....

►►► reading, particularly :

		Romantic poetry, which particularly appeals to me because of its vibrant tribute to the beauty of nature and to simple things, of the passionate feelings it conveys, often half-way between hope and despair, of the existential issues it raises through the use of metaphors and surrealist images (Alphonse de Lamartine, Charles Baudelaire, Théodore de Banville, Paul Verlaine, Victor Hugo, William Wordsworth, John Keats, William Blake, Percy Bysshe Shelley,…), persian poetry (Farid-ud-Din'Attar, Khalil Gibran,...) and also Pablo Neruda's poems.
		Books concerned with astronomy ; despite not being a scientist, I have a fascination for nebulae and constellations, the cosmos in general, and a true passion for works by Hubert Reeves, Stephen Hawking, Carl Sagan, Gregory Benford, Michio Kaku and André Brahic on these topics.
		Books concerned with symbolism, philosophy, spirituality, mythology and ancient civilisations, as well as with the origins of humanity (Yves Coppens, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Joël de Rosnay, Pascal Pick, Erick Seinandre, Richard Leakey,...)
		Sci-Fi and futurist novels particularly by Jules Verne, legends and extra-ordinary stories by John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, novels by Bernard Werber, Denis Guedj, Aldous Huxley (Brave New World,...), George Orwell (1984, Animal Farm,...), spiritual novels like those of Daniel Meurois, metaphorical and philosophical stories by Richard Bach (Jonathan Livingston Seagull), and also most of Oscar Wilde's novels (particularly The Picture of Dorian Gray)...

 
►►► birds, whose stylised feathers dress most of my paintings in the collection "Evanescence". Birds have always been fascinating me for their beauty, but above all the symbolism related to them. If I had to keep only two books, it would be : "The Conference of Birds" by Farid-ud-Din'Attar and "Jonathan Livingston Seagull" by Richard Bach ;

►►► Oriental art, particularly the curves and scrolls of Arabic calligraphy, even though I do not have the chance to understand their meaning beyond the strong emotions experienced ;

►►► a spiritual "quest for The Divine"; my permanent existential questions about life, the afterlife, the reason for all things to be... or not to be... Convinced that nothing exists by chance, that nothing comes "out of the blue", that there is a "perfect plan" behind everything, this quest is the source of most of my artworks, particularly the collections "Celestial Visions" and "Evanescence";

►►► ... Finally, of course works by the great painters of the past (see this page)which have inspired and moved me, and left their mark in my heart and mind, in particular those by :

• painters of the Italian Renaissance whom I consider as the greatest of all painters (Sandro Botticelli, MichelAngelo, Raphael and Léonardo da Vinci) for the perfection of their works, their sacred symbolism and overall harmony ;
   
• romantic painters of the 19th Century (William Blake and William Turner) and the Impressionnists (Claude Monet and Alfred Sisley…) for the vibrant homage they gave to light and to the beauty of Nature ;
   
• the pre-raphaelites (Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Sir John William Waterhouse) and also in a more formal style Emile Vernon and William Adolphe Bouguereau, for the subtlety they gave to shapes, the attention they gave to detail, their love for feminity, the strong emotional impact of their work and the touching impression they convey of "times gone by" ;
   
• and finally, amongst the great paintings of the last century, I love the harmony of the combined colours and gold displayed in Art nouveau (Gustav Klimt), the poetic and naive character of watercolours by Marie Laurencin, the fragile and delicate works by Amadeo Modigliani, the strong and vivid colours of Fauvism (Paul Gauguin, Henri Matisse and George Braque), the strongly symbolic and imaginary power of the Surrealists with their combined mystique and humour (Salvador Dali and René Magritte), the "dada" paintings by Francis Picabia and Andy Warhol's pop art.

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Musical source : Sarah Vaughan :"Like someone in love" - Broadcasting rights : Youtube