In the beginning was the earth, and it was rich and untarnishable
Faced with the unknown, the unconscious and the mystery of infinity, humans are faced with a Cornelian choice: what/who to believe? Julien Peltier has not chosen. He wanders through the world of the senses, carried along by his calling, as he wanders, open to all forms of message, listening for the signs of destiny and the universe.
For as long as he can remember, his vocation as an artist has been consubstantial with his being.
A dreamer, attentive to beauty like an inaccessible star, he tirelessly questioned nature and his thick, teeming inner self, unencumbered by contingencies, polishing his thoughts with an Enlightenment brush.
From the outset, he realized that his quest would be endless, his taste for perfection bordering on obsession.
Materials were his lifeblood. Pewter in his early youth, precious stones in his middle years and now paint, whose intricacies, tricks and manufacturing secrets he delights in.
He's not an original, he knows how to be in the world, he knows all its codes, and he plays with them masterfully. But beyond reality, he captures and probes the signals that surround us, summoning matter. Like a Druid, a modern-day alchemist, driven by the reading of ancient grimoires and parchments, he has been searching for 8 years - mystical number - the key to getting back to the essence of natural colors; recreating colors as a fundamental palette, tirelessly, a thousand times over, without artificial chemistry or unnatural processes. Painting as the purest human expression, an ineffable return to its roots. Painting as the purest human expression, an ineffable return to its roots. 8 years of languorous work to rediscover the path of decoctions, macerations, burnings and other learned techniques, using stills, retorts and improbable equipment from a bygone era. Describing how this palette is made is improbable.
Early-morning gatherings, beech, hornbeam and oak forests, the banks of lakes, streams or rivers, flowers, all earthly concretions in their shimmer and raw prime serve his purpose. The material is illuminated, brought to life to recreate these substrates and other precipitates straight out of a forgotten age. It's a relentless process of questioning, with the focus on the strength of pastels, the quality of ochres and the depth of blacks. Acta non verba.
When the time was right, he finally put his first impressions on canvas, the raw outpouring of fertile thought clinging to the stars like a flash of lightning.
His perception of the universe is so vast that it will certainly take him several lifetimes. But never mind, he creates, he recovers, he vibrates as never before, in communion with the memory of worlds.
Illyria Pfyffer
Men must endure Their going hence,
even as their coming hither;
Ripeness is all.
William Shakespeare
King Lear, env. 1603 Act Five, Part Two
CORRESPONDENCES
In Nature's temple living pillars rise,
And words are murmured none have understood,
And man must wander through a tangled wood
Of symbols watching him with friendly eyes.
As long-drawn echoes heard far-off and dim
Mingle to one deep sound and fade away;
Vast as the night and brilliant as the day,
Colour and sound and perfume speak to him.
Some perfumes are as fragrant as a child,
Sweet as the sound of hautboys, meadow-green;
– Others, corrupted, rich, exultant, wild,
Have all the expansion of things infinite:
As amber, incense, musk, and benzoin,
Which sing the sense's and the soul's delight.
F.P. Sturm – 1919 – Translation of Baudelaire’s Flowers of Evil - 1857
« Julien spent most of his time at his grandfather's, an upholsterer just a few yards from his house. Very creative, he would sometimes improvise as a cabinetmaker, sometimes as an upholsterer. He often let his imagination run wild. Like when he decided to repaint the entire interior of his grandfather's Renault Estafette... »
Gilles Peltier, the artist's father
Visual identity & web design : dianeclaire.z &
© 2024 Julien_peltier
Photo credit : Vincent Sastre & Eliott Antoine
Extracts from the short film Alchemia directed by Stéphane Courbat
