Jean-Paul PERRENX Shop

Original work

This collection consists of 114 drawings or paintings on boards, made between 1989 and 1997. They represent, in a multiplicity of dreamlike and colourful universes, a whole series of couples. It was not always easy to distinguish them from those in the "Suspended Characters" collection.

Text by Jean-Paul Perrenx: "In my painting, I like to encircle, girdle, trace, furrow, dig, scratch. The line, at the tip of the brush, at the width of the brush, or under the point of a nail, shapes its itinerary, places itself in the place that I give it in relation to my state of mind of a moment, to my vision of things, to the state of mind of my thoughts of a morning, an evening or another day. In my registers, there is a line that runs across the canvas, the one that my hand draws with confidence. I like this line. It satisfies me because it is as I imagine it, as I want it to be. It often draws a face, eyes, lips, and I don't know what else, with the precision that my eye decides, with the dexterity of the hand that envisages in the moment. And then there is the other version, the other version of things, the other way of doing or not doing things, because this time the hand flies around and takes the life of the drawing casually. As for my eye, it pretends to look elsewhere, to look outside, to look a little where it wants. I'm talking about the clumsy line. The clumsy line is the one that is left to grow on its own. Either it is in love, in love with a colour, or it has drunk too much turpentine. This line, and it doesn't matter what the painter looks like, travels on the format without a ticket, as a stowaway. It doesn't care about the ticket inspector, the station master, the canvas master with a well-cut lead pencil. He is a child on the canvas and he does not want to be where he is expected. The hand, my hand, becomes fatalistic, even though I know it can count on its fingers, at least up to five, to draw the situation with a straight face. It's like a bicycle when you let go of the handlebars. You ride a little bit in a zigzag but you follow your path as you should in these cases.