François Speich
Paul Magendie painting in Luxembourg – Wartercolor on paper – 36 cm x 56 cm
François Speich and watercolor, by Paul MAGENDIE
François Speich gives landscape watercolours an energetic contribution where the concise touch can speak with simplicity of space and light. In the visible facture, the watery stains of his expression, almost thrown away nonchalantly, plunge us into an impression of reality, an atmosphère, a température, where he was at the moment of his vision.
To this removed style is added an obvious pleasure of composition : here the wall pannel of a Church obscures a large part of the page so that this band that remains becomes light, there twoo three trees justapose horizontally so simply that one does not dare to ask why.
A tehnique too often neglected for its outdated connotation, François Speich returns his letters of modernity to watercolor. It does not do so explicity or demonstratively by the choice of subjects, but significantly in a way that smells like the current, not postponing or provoking, but simply of today.
A work that comes from pleasure
Paul Magendie was born in Paris in 1978. Initiated into the practice of the tromple-l’œil de chevalet by Pierre GILOU, he continued his training at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, in workshops of Pierre CARRON and Pat ANDREA. Having defended a doctorat thesis in visual arts and art sciences, he currently teaches aesthetic philosophy and drawing in Paris.
François Speich, Journey to freedom, by Laurent QUIVOGNE
60 years of being attentive to others, says François, 60 years of seeking arrangements, rather than conflicts, of seeking harmony. This research in life as in painting, with a great sensitivity to light, colours and composition. To express what I feel, he said, and the essence of things, the essence of what I see. « I really enjoy travelling » adds François. Especially Italy, where he still goes often. Italy, a land of light, is a favourite destination for Lorraine’s people like me », he adds, citing the épisode of the Duke of Lorraine becoming Duke of Tuscany. Atavism in Lorraine.
Today, however, a desire emerges from something different, perhaps less accomodating, less harmonious. François is working to express something more intimate, more hidden, more difficult too, and perhaps less luminous. Something he would have hidden for 60 years. A new form for a as yet unspoken content, a new form as a liberation. Perhaps the mourning that François endure is no stranger to it. The mourning of his father and the mourning of the one who, he says, moste influence me in painting. His father in life and his father in painting. Of this one, he says that they made together his las exhibition, at the end of 2016, as it is said that we lived the las moments with his father.
The day after ouR meeting, François went on a journey ; a journey somewhere in the world, somewhere inside himself, to other forms ; a journey to freedom.
Laurent Quivogne is a writer, coach and therapist