Yves Bosquet

I mostly work with wood, it imposes a constraint in face processing that is well suited to the expression I want to give them. I would like: the minimum expression and the maximum intensity, it is not contradictory. I make earthenware portraits, this material is better suited than the wood to trace smaller subtleties of fat cheeks of a little boy, the look of a girl. So I sometimes carve clothes in the timber, which allows me to be less traditional. When I am in front of a girl of twenty years, a child or a slightly intimidated man of fifty years, I think nature does things very well, I read quite a few, leaving the personality of the other charm me. I focus on the similarity noting that it goes with the quality of the portrait, of sculpture. I search, unpretentious, to render what happens inside rather than outside. Especially, as in my imagination sculptures, not too much expression, not supported smiles, nothing sentimental, which gives my work this somewhat distant side. I turn a lot to antiquity where archaeologists excavate from ruins lost in the deserts statues with mysterious traits. To arrive at an adequate expression, I can work for hours, days, sometimes a month or two later, I refinish the lips, wrinkles under the eyes. This is direct carving, so I risk having to start all over again. Well then, I decapitate with no regrets, and I repeat once again my books on Romanesque, Gothic statues, faces of Gustave Desmedt, those of Picasso drawings, kores of the Parthenon and, in terms of a synthesis often radical, I immerse myself in the world of African art. I have great difficulty in turning a head, a face, for me it is always more intense when it simply looks ahead. I rarely leave wood in its natural state, I colour it, I cover it with lace or various tissues, I burn it. That said, I still wonder if I will not let myself go some length, after all, Egon Schiele's not that bad. I also make reliefs, sea landscapes using wood, shells and old boards found on beaches. The sea, horizontal lines going up and down twice a day, leaving many treasures in the sand. There are also fishmongers, their somewhat distant quiet, their red hands in cold water, their rubber aprons. Inexhaustible inspiration, the sea which without artists would feel a bit lonely. Recently, on the occasion of the discovery of old garden fences, I imagined some trees, some forests. There are often no more than vertical lines there, but leaves, to be short, they are moulds. I also have some still lives where, precisely, I try to give expression to objects that do not emit any. So, my ambition is to make a coffee maker smile, make a boiled egg tragic. Yves Bosquet – January 2007