"On peut peindre avec deux couleurs, dessiner avec une. Trois, quatre au plus, ont pendant des siècles suffi aux hommes."
Henri Michaux (1899-1984)
Biography
Joël Bariller is a French artist whose multidisciplinary work spans across painting, drawing, etching and sculpture.
He first studies to draw and paint at l'Académie de La Grande Chaumière, ceramics and sculpture at l'Atelier Loret in Paris, and etching at l'Atelier Lacourrière-Frélaut.
After having spent several years in London and Toronto, he now lives between Paris and Malicorne-Sur-Sarthe, his birth place in the countryside.
Work
Joel Bariller made his debuts in the art world as a figurative artist but quickly developed an acute interest for abstractionism, asserting total freedom in his techniques.
Throughout his etching work, he looks into nature to find inspiration. As such, he creates a series of work on Trees, which are, in his view, nature’s most majestic representation. Yet, instead of depicting their strenght, he choses to express Trees through their vulnerability, focusing on scars and imperfections. But the artist is also fascinated by the smallest creatures, as he reveals in his metaphorical work on insects. Both etching series bring to light two of Joel Bariller’s favorite themes : psyche and symbolism.
During the same period, he also produces a book composed of 26 etchings and poems around the theme of war.
Joel Bariller gets acknowledged for his etching style and wins the Rank Xerox Etching Prize in 1973.
In many ways, he uses his etching skills to master his drawing style, made of sharp lines and acute monochromatic contrasts.
His canvases, which he generally paints in the countryside, tend to leave more room for colors. Still, they completely resonate with the artist’s use of nature as a source of inspiration and his ubiquitous expression of psyche and symbolism.
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