Interview for the website Be & Art
Interview date: May 2014
Jérémie Baldocchi, you are a young French emerging painter. Can you tell me why you decide to become a painter?
I think I always wanted to do an art trade, small I wanted to be a photographer and I quickly turned to painting.
I have always been surrounded by my grandfather did the ironwork, my grandmother painted. I modeled from a very young age my uncle, I wanted to be an artist like him.
I do not really know how to explain why I chose this profession, surely want to convey my vision of things out of my head bad passages that have tarnished my childhood, make me happy or perhaps stupidly, like any other artist, put a stone my time on earth.
Have you studied art?
Yes, is not really good for classical studies I spent more time distracting other students that study.
So I quickly left the school to lead me, at first, to evening classes to a private art school.
The following year, I started a cycle of 3 years in the same school.
The first year I studied illustration and interior architecture, then the rest of my training, I am devoted myself exclusively to painting.
I was fortunate to have excellent teachers who taught in the most prestigious schools and renowned than where I was.
And the students in my class were more talented than each other, which was a big motivation, it pushed me to challenge myself and go beyond my limits.
Who were your favorite artists when you started? How did they influence your work?
Of course I’m influenced by many artists.
At first, during my adolescence, I was very inspired by the works of Pierre et Gilles, David LaChapelle or those of Jeff Koons, particularly because of the colors and how they highlight the “ugly” things at first sight, this fascinated me.
Then my desires turned to artists and works more tortured as the work of Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, Jean Rustin, Jenny Saville and Leigh Bowery.
But I also like the various other artists such as Bottero universe, Valerio Adami, Mark Ryden, Voutch or Ray Caesar.
I am very interested in photography and film universe where I draw a lot of ideas.
Can you describe how you work and the process?
It’s a bit the same process as filmmaker.
When I am inspired on a subject I do sketches framing and I think the colors would be most appropriate.
Then I make a selection, as a “casting”, among the thousands of sketches body I do in advance, so I do not think I created new.
Once the final design is ready I am researching material and I also created new ones.
I stick it directly on the canvas by layering paper, acrylic paint and ink.
Why don’t you paint the head?
It all started during my second illustration courses in the evening when I left high school.
I had to make my first illustration and I did not know what heads do my characters, so I brought my work in the state to talk to my teacher. And that I do not say anything he loved the concept of “headless” which, of course, was not wanted.
Then I continued in this direction.
This adds an element of interactivity to the image, the viewer can give free rein to his imagination.
What are your wishes as a painter?
I’d like to work for very large works.
Explore new topics and finally succeed to accurately represent what I have in my head.
What is next for you, Jérémie Baldocchi?
As every year I open my studio mid-June throughout a weekend, in the context of visits artists’ studios in the 18th arrondissement of Paris.
I will participate in the Fair ADAC Chatillon (France) in October.
Some of my paintings are from the end of November in London.
And I expect a response to an exhibition this summer in New York.
Otherwise an artistic point of view I would like to make sculpture but I did not have enough space at home.
See this interview on the website of Be & Art
