Mediterranean Sea, when you hold me
(from Venezia to Cycladic Islands)
Since childhood, Alain Pointillart draws, paints, and creates collages. In 1987, he acquires his first English watercolor set and it is a revelation. He paints and draws on his favorite spots, and specifically, in Venezia and the Greek Islands. His watercolors do not aim to reflect reality but much more the breadth of his sable fur and boar that these islands, Venezia and Amorgos, two Mediterranean witches (or fairies) suggest to him. In particular, these "blues" which have been forever obsessing his soul and his creations.
When the train from Paris to Venezia was still existing or during his long ferryboats trips from the Piraeus to the Cycladic islands, Alain painted and drew using his favorite tool, a black dented box containing 27 colors from Windsor and Newton. In the train, on the boats, while painting freely, his work attracted attention and often admiration and praise with some asking where he was showing his watercolors.
His first exhibition took place in the Summer 2013 on Amorgos, thanks to Dimitris Eliadis, of "12 Acropolis" in the port of Egiali (Amorgos), who was one of the first to wish to show Alain's work. Later on in December 2013, 250 watercolors summarizing the works from the last years travelled in the Greek Islands, represented a major showing in Athens, near the Acropolis at the Art Center of Vryssaki(1). This was followed by a second presentation(2) in February 2014, part of a collective showing by "12 Acropolis art house". In September 2014, and then 2015, some Cycladic watercolors were shown in Amorgos(3,4). From July to September 2015, some of his Venetian and Cycladic watercolors were shown in Vienna (Austria)(5). Since April 2016, some of his Venetian works are exposed in Venice at the Galleria Salizada(6) and last year again, Alberto de Giulio, owner of the Galleria, has selected around 40 of Alain's recent paintings to show them until September 2023. His first Parisian "Aegean" exhibition took place at the end of October 2016 (Galerie Desmos)(7) and a second showing of his work took place in Vienna in November 2016 (Aart eventraum)(8). Since September 2016, the bookshop La Librairie Vocabulaire in Paris regularly shows Alain's latest works from all horizons, Greek and Venetian of course and others never far from the Sea, Trouville, Boston, South of France. For example, Line Roques, for the 2nd anniversary of her bookshop's opening, presented 30 watercolors of Alain in October 2018(9). Cycladic watercolors were then shown in April 2019(10). Between November 2019 and March 2020(11), a new exhibition "Maritimes, Lagunaires, Lacunaires..." variations on the swamps, the Laguna and the seaside, took place. In October 2020, a selection entitled "Miscellanées d'Aquarelles série I" was presented(12) in the Library and it was followed by "série II" in December with the most recent watercolors (some painted during the confinement) up to spring 2021... Finally, around 20 watercolours on various themes are to be admired permanently at the Comptoir du cadre d'art (1 rue de Pondichery Paris 15e) from December 2020(13).
Before travelling on the Aegean Sea and presenting his work to Twelve Acropolis, Alain had several exhibits of his original works between 2000 and 2008, with some success where he was working at INRA: in addition to practice watercolor, Alain was a researcher in this French public institute. He is also a good photographer, another string to his bow, and has had several exhibitions of his pictures in Paris and its neighborhood.
The Mediterranean Sea (Venice, Provence, Greece, Spain, Italy, etc.) flaps its waves, its beaches, its villages and cites, its coastlines, its foam, its sand, its red tiles, its crumbling and chipped walls, or its whitewashed houses in the majority of his pictorial work. He often leaves his brushes of sable fur and boar playing like the wave with the hull of the ferries, he let himself be lulled by the roll of the Rialto train, waiting for Santa Lucia... Overwhelmed, he filled his eyes with the Cycladic white chapels and their game with the sun and sky, infinite variations of shadow and light. In Venezia, the waters constantly changing, the red bricks flayed by salt, the thousand and one fabulous shows city lights at night, the canals and empty calle at dawn, charm and haunt him, even when he his back home. And it is without ending and limit that he paints again and again, coloring the theme of the City of all cities that he cannot forget.
Alain Pointillart was born near Paris in 1945
Paris April 2024
(1) Bleus et blues sur l’Egée bleue ...
(2) αέναες-συμπτώσεις II
(3) Amorgos blues
(4) Amorgos blues again
(5) Genuss Galerie
(6) La Salizada Galleria
(7) Aquarelles Égéennes
(8) Alain Pointillart, watercolor
(9) 30 aquarelles récentes
(10) Aquarelles cycladiques
(11) Maritimes, Lagunaires, Lacunaires...
(12) Miscellanées d'aquarelles