FRÉDÉRIQUE ASSAËL

I am a french painter born in the city of Marseilles in 1965.

Since my childhood, I have always drawn portraits.

During the late 1990's I worked in several painting workshops in Brussels, Belgium.

Back to France, I focused on sanguine and charcoal drawing, concentrating on portraits.

I approached academic oil painting through the study of the Masters (Raphaël, Leonardo da Vinci, Caravaggio, Géricault...).

I then fully committed to a personal work.

I suggest reality through figuration and abstraction while drawing on traditionals techniques, thus I can give free rein to my imagination.

I focus on what is most vulnerable and sensitive in my view : the portrait.

The face is not what can be seen but rather what escapes our vision. All these faces full of mysteries captivate me.

I seek to decode the mystery of the portrait, describing and reinventing it in my way.

In the past few years, I have been looking into animals, their fragility and their strengh. The diversity of animal real facinates me.

I have explored the kudu, the bighorn sheep, the bull and the bobcat.

I am working currently on the history of painting, homage to the masters who continue to pass lessons centuries later. I want to seek a dialogue with the masters offering a contemporary take faithful to my visual language. I use citations and cross-references of masters artworks (Raphaël, Rembrandt, Van Eyck, Andrea del Sarto...).

The technique is merely a tool that make me free, allowing me to express my vision.

I manufacture some of my own colors and my linen canvases.

I prepare the different layers with mixed techniques creating a network of topographical lines that punctuate the canvas.

My subjects emerge from a fragmented and connected background that is laid on the canvas.

"I don't use portraits to paint but I strive to use oil painting to transcribe the portrait as they appear to me."