Artiste : CHRISTOPHER LAVENAIR *

Christopher Lavenair grew up between Paris and London: a dual cultural approach that has had a strong influence on his work. 

After studying at the Wimbledon School of Art, where he practised painting and went on to develop his pictorial techniques, the Bettie Morton Gallery began to take a close interest in his pictorial and photographic work in 2002. 

While everything begins with the irresistible act of drawing a pencil in a few sketchbooks, the artist slides with ease from figuration to abstraction to satisfy a growing need for gesture. 

The themes of women and music, recurrent in the artist's work, invade the field of experimentation from another angle. Colour takes hold of the media to become the artist's own term. Little by little, the sign dies, and colour becomes a new power. 

In this apparent chromatic chaos, nothing is left to chance. The construction constantly nourishes the work of the image, which for Lavenair is played out between two worlds, that of photography and that of painting. 

Taking representations of reality from magazine covers or newspaper front pages, the artist turns to colour modification to give them a second life. For him, this operation is a desire to resurrect the frozen image, eternalized by the application of gouache, acrylic, pastel, gesso, felt-tip pen, tearing and collage. 

A silhouette appears, disappears, a look or a mouth flees in the abundance of flat tints, revealing their extension in colour.