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Oil and Watercolour Paintings.

The chief recurring themes in Jean-François Contremoulin's work revolve around three principle axes: the landscape, the nude, and the self-portrait, the latter being the outlet for his own moods. Very often, he expresses a specific aspect of his doubts and suffering, preferring out of modesty to spare other people's faces when painting the effects of worry. As for his technical choices, they are extremely diverse, varying from watercolours (which he often uses in the form of crayons), to pastels, and oils with gouache which he likes for their transparent and fluid quality. Yet he also loves sculpting. Finding paper very appealing, he washes it down before applying colour, and step by step crafts a piece with a prevailing energetic style that is somewhere between figurative and abstract, a choice that largely depends on the subject being treated. His gardens often feature immense tonal freedom, regularly including harsh and strident colours, while his iridescent and almost transparent nudes possess an ineffable softness, and a supreme smoothness. As for his self-portraits, they act as an evacuation channel for his anxieties.

Luis Porquet, writer and art critic

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