La Cicatrice Détail (2009) Painting by Toytoy

TOYTOY

HOW, WHY?

At the beginning of 2002, with my last savings and thanks to a swimming competition in Australia, I bought a little by chance, it seems to me, an “aboriginal songline” canvas 1.40 x 2.20; the events of a fairly mundane life and rediscovering my teenage love push me to exteriorize and begin to enjoy myself by practicing painting.
The work of David BOWIE, an esthete artist and intellectual little known for his painting, appeals to me.
Jackson POLLOCK in his journey, his suffering and his painting upset me.
I visit a Jean Michel BASQUIAT retrospective at the Dina Verny Foundation. Dimitri, my 5-year-old son who accompanies me, talks about “scribbles”.
I discovered an essential artist for me on Ebay: RABA (Michel RABANELLY)
I buy canvases and drawings from him, we become friends and we also try painting with 4 hands.
RABA paints as I think and brings optimism into the pictorial world that is mine.

I naturally define my work as psychoanalytic, a violent and pessimistic message.
In the early days the research was rather aesthetic, with work in small series of 3 works. However, I quickly emphasize the importance of accident and spontaneity in creation and a form of painting that I will call “automatic” in reference to the writing of the same name. This is followed by collages and the appearance of repetitions in the images. The multitude of images that surround us offers, from my point of view, an inexhaustible source of almost spontaneous creation.
I like to define (when I am forced to!) the Why of my painting as a psychological catharsis. This is also the reason for the appearance of texts at the end of 2005.

I like BASQUIAT and POLLOCK for their motivations to paint and their suffering, on the other hand I visit very few exhibitions, I claim to maintain a certain virginity in my influences and exhibitions can depress me...

I recognize attraction, admiration, empathy, a form of identity for and with certain misunderstood solitaries besides the painters above, n°6, David BOWIE, Bobby FISCHER, Mickael JACKSON, Serge GAINSBOURG, Mohamed ALI…

I paint on a gray cardboard or wooden cardboard support, always quite large formats 0.5 to 1m2 or more, preparation of the backgrounds for ceiling painting, unlike the mounted canvas (the noble support to which I am thinking of switching later ), cardboard allows me to work on the ground or flat (never on an easel), in fact my way of painting is quite dynamic and I sometimes mistreat the support.

I work quickly in several layers (especially for drying times) I use all existing mediums (except oil and watercolor for the moment which I find too conformist and which do not suit me) building paints, industrial paints, acrylic paints, paints aerosols from graffiti artists, glues, recycled elements…
...

• Nationality: FRANCE
• Date of birth : 1964
• Artistic domains:
• Groups: Contemporary French Artists