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Patrice Bru

Artist Painter -
Abstract art

Address :

32000 AUCH

Biography

Patrice Bru is a native of Albi, a town in the Tarn region of southern France.

His taste for drawing and painting was inspired by an elementary school teacher when he was about ten years old. But it is really when he was in possession of a modest easel, some canvas boards, a small range of paint tubes offered as a gift, that his passion for figurative painting was born.

As a teenager, he aspired to enroll in the School of Fine Arts in Toulouse, but he was quickly caught up in financial considerations, which forced him to rethink his orientation.
Forced to pursue a more classical curriculum, he nonetheless retained his passion for painting, setting aside time to practice, visit museums and meet artists.

Determined not to let go of his brushes, he tried to reconcile his professional activity and his desire to paint; and this until 2018. That year was the time of retirement, the transition without transition from a very active life, rich in human contacts and travels, to a suddenly calmer existence, in a small town of Gers where he left his bags. Nevertheless, he quickly perceived the opportunity that this forced rest imposed to devote himself fully to his passion.

It is during this same period that was born a true infatuation for the abstract painting to which he devotes from now on much of his time.

To synthesize his thoughts and artistic intentions, he likes to refer to the words of two artists he admires: Renoir, for whom "There is something more in painting that cannot be explained" and Hopper who liked to say that "If you could say it in words, there would be no reason to paint it".

Based on the established principle that one always learns from others, he joined the Maison des Artistes and the association Art x Terra, which specializes in training and support for artists. He also continues to learn from other painters.

Artistic approach

During his early years, he practiced reproducing landscapes or still lifes taken from art magazines, while testing different mediums: gouache, watercolor and oil paint, which he finally settled on, at least for a while.

By dint of training and perseverance, the small errors of composition, color harmonies, perspectives... typical of the beginner, -especially when he is self-taught-, have gradually disappeared.

At the same time, he acquired more self-confidence and dared to create pure works by painting his own still lifes or landscapes found here and there during his travels or simply drawn from his imagination.

One thing is certain, until then he was confined to the creation of exclusively figurative works, until one day he dared to create an abstract painting with acrylics and it was a real revelation for him. He perceived this new style of painting as a formidable "artistic playground", particularly conducive to creation.

Vivid colors, diverse and varied forms or textures, made of structural mortar, sand, wood, paper, applications with a spalter or a knife, ... so many techniques, which allow him to express himself without a net. Guided sometimes by an intuitive approach, he begins his creations with a background graded from dark to light, on which he deposits, projects, spreads, dabs, rubs the paint in order to give it life, to make the colors vibrate and to animate the forms.

However, for the most part, the work is the result of preparatory work from which the creative process emerges.

In spite of the complexity of abstract painting, it is really for him a formidable means of expressing his emotions and his feelings, without however wanting to freeze the reading of his works.

Everyone must be able to interpret them according to their own sensitivity without being locked into the artist's.

"Abstract painting as a passport to the imagination!

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