How did your Chtis bélots
come about?
They were born in 2006. I'd been making circles and little figures under the table for years when I was at the Beaux-Arts, but I told myself it wasn't the kind of work expected of me. And then there was a competition I didn't really want to enter. And since I sometimes act a bit grumpy, I made these little figures. Against all odds, I was selected. My teachers, who were discovering my work, thought it was brilliant and encouraged me to develop that side of me. So I started researching media, and giving them a personal character.
How do you reconcile the detail and the overall effect of the painting?
The technique I use is pareidolia.
Pareidolia?
It's seeing concrete things, often faces, in abstract things. Like when you're a child, you see lots of things in the shape of clouds. So I draw my clouds on the canvas, generally against a plain background. Interlacing patterns in the form of automatic writing with felt-tip pens. And I look for characters in my circles and I set up my scene, which I then begin to paint. And then the next day I see characters I hadn't seen before, and I go back to them. I like it when, in my large canvases, the viewer looks for the little figures, a little lost, like in the comic strip "Where's Wally?" For example, I did a painting called "The Ch'tis Climbers on the Pic du Midi d'Ossau" with my Ch'tis Bélots climbing. All that's left is to find out who's belaying whom by following the rope through the tangled figures. I like it when the viewer stays in front of the canvas for a long time, trying to understand. There are also paintings with quotes to find, and I see the audience tilting their heads to follow the text.
They're characters full of detail and color!
Colors are, for me and for the audience, a way to escape the ambient gloom. Flashy colors to make me feel good. It's also very meticulous work, since for each character, there are details that I paint with a very small brush. It gives a kind of cheerfulness, and at the same time, my technique calms me in the same way, since you have to be focused.
What do they tell us?
Each painting actually tells a story from my life. I come out of a movie theater to see Avatar, and behind that, I start to create a large canvas with little green and blue characters because the filming was sensational. I go to listen to Boulevard des Airs at the Pic du Midi; I loved it so much that I had to create singers. These are intimate stories, personal emotions. Some should be taken with a pinch of salt. I have a painting called Les Ch'tis Martiens (The Martians), where you see all the colors of humans on Earth: Martians with stripes, checks, or dots. There are also LGBT colors. There are many messages behind them.
When we see your paintings, we realize that photography doesn't do it all!
The medium is above all a particular technique. I prepare my small paintings myself so that they have volume and shine. It gives me great pleasure when I see people stopping at the entrance to exhibitions to look at my paintings. They're joyful, they shine! I think that given the global context, which isn't exactly joyful, we need to give ourselves little windows of pleasure like that. Let's take advantage of them.
Exhibition at the Tarbes Tourist Office until March 28
Her paintings are exhibited alongside the glass creations of Luce Colombo at the Tarbes Tourist Office until March 28. A great opportunity to see my Ch’tis bélots
by Byam Le Bot up close to appreciate the details and in real life to understand how photography fails to capture the brilliance and depth of his works.
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