i am painter, sculptor and teacher of paint.

I was born in Paris where I lived until 1995 before moving to a small village in Normandy, in Calvados. I studied drawing at the Académie de la place des Vosges in Paris, together with data-processing management studies. I am also a pianist and cellist.

Music and painting have always been with me. Great - grandson of the impressionist painter Auguste Durst, and grandson of the illustrator André Durst, I have always lived surrounded by the works of my forefathers.

For the last ten of years I have devoted myself entirely to creative works. Self-taught in sculpture, I have developed a technique of working with textile and cement "dracim", of which you will find examples on the site.

As regards my painting that I have practised for more than thirty years, I have of course like most artists, studied the history of painting... Beginning by copying the great masters and the impressionists, with a penchant for Modigliani whose influence is still felt in my portraits, then abstract art in its many forms.

Today, in my series entitled "the world of Poucs"This series of paintings is on the theme of shamanism. The leaping figures I call 'poucs' - a Norman patois version of the word 'poches' which are sacks for holding grain.
The poucs are nature spirits, suggested in the small paintings by imaginary rituals. The figures spread vital energy, symbolized by the red balls, and are surrounded by other symbolic elements - the fish (water), the bird (air), the orange-reds (fire) - the whole merging into an earthly dance of gaiety and mischief., I use classical elements for the forms but I also use modern art textures, influenced by Pollock with his "pouring" or "drip technique", that I prefer to call "the Angel's share". This series on the theme of Shamanism is better suited to my spirit than traditional works.

In a style that one could categorize as "neoprimitive", it is a quasi therapeutic form of painting as it is happy, bouncy and mischievous! The graphic simplicity of its elements make a universal painting, accessible to all, understandable by all and interpretable by all, because things happen in these little pictures...

Thank you of your visit and perhaps see you soon.

http://www.sylvain-sylv.fr