Artistic background

What is my background?

INSEE statistician after an initial training as building engineer and interior designer (ESTP 1987 - Art Deco ENSAD 1991), long time I searched my way, including in the arts.

 I explored the useful art of making hyperrealistic hand prostheses in the United States and Italy (1992), before diving the adventure in fashion design in 1993. Couture collection under my arm, I knocked on the doors of larger houses and got some interviews: Jean Patou, Jean Paul Gaultier, Sonia Rykiel, or letter of encouragement: Christian Lacroix. Jewelry, glasses, chairs, lighting, editing, all other areas where I could make some productions or get some contacts: Alexandre Reza (jewelry), Afflelou (for an assistant designer job), Centre Georges Pompidou (chairs), Eurostat for its first book of cultural statistics in Europe (Cultural statistics in Europe see bottom page 4). Since 1996, I’ve been working as a statistician at INSEE, the french federal National Statistical Institut. And I definitely thought I bracketed my artistic career I would have re-activated in retirement.

Off to discover my pictorial identity

                Initially, I started to play the classics on my way to get familiar with oil: naturally I chose Courbet and his self-portrait The Desperate whose intensity had fascinated me when Courbet exhibition at the Grand Palais in 2007. Then I wanted to change the theme by making me happy with a painting that served as my wallpaper for a long time: Irises by Van Gogh. Finally, the mysteries of Leonardo’s painting, I began to touch it by revisiting the Mona Lisa. Along the way, I stopped when several relatives told me she already seemed to them as very original. And then I had to find my identity in personal canvases now. It was a combination of sculpture and nature with The Dance by Carpeaux integrated front of the cliff of the Peaks of Cassis. Then came the Navy and the Repented, the apple blossoms that met the Iris, as the Young legionnaire did in The Desperate, or Callas to Mona Lisa.

                After these pictures enlarged, I wanted to paint body size. There was this photographer whose first I wondered if he himself was not top model so I thought he was handsome. Then how to paint nudes? Where can I find models? The supposed end of the world in the year 2012 gave me the idea of ​​separating Adam and Eve... and apple at the same time. This is why they appear on separate canvases and back, looking back to Eve, or over a precipice, for Adam. Apple in full bloom of Spring meanwhile illustrates a form of rebirth to come. The first academic period leaves a door open to a new exploration, in search of my pictorial identity. I swung the crossfire: figurative painting or abstract painting, aesthetics or rule of message, to sell paint or paint for ideas?

A first step: to participate in a group exhibition

Three months before the expiry of two years that I had forseen, I was able to expose [1] and sell my first paintings, in parallel with my work at INSEE.

However, I did not improvised painter ;-) In Corsica in 1998, I participated in a group exhibition of painting, where the public voted for two days, I got the audience award... Delight, like the day I managed to enter the ’Art Deco’ School. An amateur collector of paintings again held up a restaurant with a family portrait I had done, saying, "Look, this is an artist that we have among us, he is an painter!" It makes you smile all these stories, but that’s part of the springs that gave me the strength to undertake ;-)

You also can start to tell me about the three artistic productions you prefer from my website by leaving me such a message in the end section or via one of the links "abipbip". To do this, go into the catalog works, Portfolio. If you do not like at all, I am also interested in what you think as long as your opinion remains constructive.

What places intend my paintings?

My large format paintings, I imagine them in a private home, in hotel lobbies or restaurants, fashion agencies, journalism, leisure centers.

Finally

I hope you have as much fun watching my artistic productions, if not more than I’ve had to carry them out.

You can reach me at my personal email address abipbip@free.fr by leaving your contact, or directly through the site.

See you soon, good to you. Pierre Berret