Artistes contemporains

Studio

Former Stabbles of the Foreigners Abbey of Dommartin Tortefontaine where the artist works

Chris is an artist who only conceives the creation of a painting through a long process inherited from the great old masters.
Usually, painters limit themselves to producing a study and to working directly on the canvas with conventional colours without bothering about their ingredients, the true alchemy of pigments or the real meaning of what they represent.

To be a contemporary painter means the acquisition of a classical knowledge because painting is the result of a long approach where the reference to the past leads to real achievement. It is therefore not surprising to know that Chris shows a keen interest in the art of prehistoric times which remains astonishingly modern.

Those 20,000 year-old paintings found in caves have induced him to think about the meaning of his own works. Chris respects so much the substance he wants to use that he creates his own colours grinding and mixing them with special additives.

Stone age, oil on canvas, 44x31 cm

This artist is so obsessed by the quality of the substances he uses to such a point that he is always challenging himself. First of all, he carefully chooses his canvasses or wood supports, preparing them intensively before tackling his works.
After a long preparation phase he then fiddles with his brushes
like a musician playing like a virtuoso, putting colours in harmony, penetrating their mysterious depth, juggling with glazes, gambling with their poetry in a kind of sensual duel while trying to reach the sacred form of art.

It's a real alchemy that develops throughout the process of the construction of a painting and from the duel of the brushes against the canvas true painting will be the victor of such a breath-taking fight. Chris, whose real name is Christian Weppe, works on several paintings at the same time going frantically from one another with the desire of perfection, passing through euphoric moments to doubt, opposing the achieved and non-achieved while trying to reach an unending quest.

Reminiscence,
oil on canvas,
55x38 cm

Since 1972, the year during which he had his first exhibition in Béthune, Northern France, Chris has been investing himself in a kind of long marathon that has led him to essentiality by observing a simple but mesmerising environment. He has been giving deep and divine renderings to simple objects, ruins or vegetation all along an initiatory process by mastering such colours as ocre, sepias and browns mixed with gold and silver tones and by composing a unique symphony exhilarating time that goes by, the disappearance of things and the representation of human ghosts originating from the prehistoric era and its mysteries as well as these flocks and symbols drawn on rocks and strangely present for thousands of years.

The works of this 42-year-old painter, so well accomplished, deliver a clear message about the past and the future of man that also glorifies creation and the questions that arise from it.

Chris, who was awarded so many gold medals in prestigious Salons during his career, promises to become one of the foremost contemporary artists of the XXIst Century and his works, bought by many art lovers, should reach new peaks price-wise.

Hymn to life, oil on canvas, 120x89 cm