Creating a new canvas is giving a material reality to a fleeting image. We have to juggle constantly between the breadcrumb of this mental slide from the imagination and the technical contingencies, that constantly bring us back to reality.
The composition
These are images with multiple inputs, where you can go from one plane to another every second. Each square centimeter of the canvas is worked with the same importance. It is therefore very complex to organize all the overlays in order to direct the gaze of the spectator without their knowledge towards the place of the canvas that the artist wants to highlight.
Although most of my creations are from my dreams. Each time you have to build this new painting on canvas, and for that to organize the space.
I would like to make the apparent complexity of the canvas as simple and mesmerizing as possible.
The painting
I use oil paint on canvas and more precisely the glazing technique. I try to get a very smooth effect from the surface, a mirror-like appearance where the one who looks comes to get lost, caught up in an “beyond”. From the mental conception of my canvas, I have to decompose the light as in a prism in order to keep colors pure and singing.
The glaze
Glaze is the application of a transparent color layer over an opaque color layer. (Icing of a yellow on a blue for example to obtain green). The glaze gives the colors an extraordinary depth. It may be lighter or darker than the tone in which it is passed. Glazing can be done in half cool, or after drying the layers below.
For my part, each canvas is made up of 5 to 10 successive layers, always richer in oil as the canvas advances, that’s why I make my own painting mediums according to the canvas evolution stage to avoid cracks.
The enrichment that glaze brings to color is magic. Only this technique in my eyes can take the viewer into the privacy of my dreams.
The drawing
It is essential, I do not have the right to the anatomical error or to “roughly” It is not necessary that the glance meets an inconsistency, otherwise the great departure towards the imaginary will not have location.
The color
According to art critic Thierry Sznytka (arts news magazine):
“The softness of Jeannette Guichard-Bunel’s palette serves up atmospheres of tart colors that never stop gaining strength, as the artist combines bold contrasts. In this game, even the cold colors end up being warm. The duality of his approach, both formally and intellectually, perfectly matches the richness of temperament of this painter.”
The graphics
I use the graphics as a last layer, at the last overlay. It contrasts with transparency, partitions the colors and makes them vibrate. It is for me a “figurative calligraphy” mainly using the curved line. Black and opaque, it is not unlike the lead rings of a stained glass window.
