Landscapes of Brittany and Scotland

Technique: oil painting on canvas.
Exhibition available in several formats.

“Grégoire Hespel is a curious sailor, a sailor of the shore. He walks the coast, photographs it when necessary, draws it, sketches it, then restores it, transforms it, magnifies it through his art. The Brittany of Keremma – a strange utopian polder conceived in the 19th century by Louis Rousseau –, the mountains of Scotland or the dark woods of imaginary forests, these are the painter’s sources of inspiration. Nevertheless, he never portrays places; at most the initiate will recognize an isolated chapel (…), this tree, such a hovel, a wreck
perhaps... but the exercise seems futile, just like trying to identify in such and such a mauve, yellow or blue patch, the heather, the broom or the barbel: what's the point?

It is in the Pantin (93) studio that the poetic alchemy takes place. However, probably out of modesty, Grégoire Hespel is more likely to talk about his technique than his art. The artist's palette is spread out in colored layers on the raw concrete floor, next to the still blank canvas, chosen meticulously: "It's a two-layer greasy coating," he says, "number 141."

At the beginning, the painter makes an extremely meticulous drawing then, often working in the wet, he multiplies the layers, projects these famous “relatively random” colored spots which soften the tone of the whole and give it its strangeness and its light; finally he varnishes using glazes tinted with this very characteristic yellow oxide. He thus obtains a “precise blur”, his “way of approaching the territory”.
Excerpt from a text by Christophe Morin, lecturer in Tours, 2012.

“In a corner of the studio, a small portrait, cracked canvas, in the style of Delacroix - “The boss!”, comments the painter.”
Excerpt from a text by Didier Goldschmidt, In the studio of Grégoire Hespel, October 2005