Eric Le Pape

"Having to do with the sea directly... it's very healthy for the body, mind and paintings"
Marin Marie, naval painter and great navigator.

It is with this quote that Eric Le Pape describes himself best - a former sailor who has travelled to the four corners of the globe. His paintings reflect both the living colours of the sea and the French coast. From a very young age, he expressed his desire to paint the ultramarine blues with palette knives. Painting with acrylics, Le Pape harnesses the essential with spontaneous gestures, which he later refines with a knife. He himself says "my painting becomes sculpture". Influenced by Cézanne and his Mediterranean paintings, he likes to paint his native Brittany with the warm colours of the south.

"The love of colour! ... The reflection of my personality. The use of colour remains vital in my compositions. To master one's subjective scales, it is of course essential to know the basics - in other words to learn how to mix or not to mix the colours together, to adjust the tonal relationships that will allow one to express feelings. In this way, colour becomes a formidable tool. A means of creating space in the same way as perspective and thus playing with masses and lines, voids and solids, shadows and lights...".

Le Pape is an artist who has received numerous awards, including the first acrylic prize "Art et Marine" of Brest, several years in a row. He is a Member of the International Academies "Greci-Marino" "del-verbano" Letters-Arts-Sciences, in Italy and is present in numerous private collections throughout the world.