The Strasbourg painter Patrick Bastardoz has been painting and exhibiting for more than twenty-five years, in parallel with the courses he gives at the Faculty of Plastic Arts in Strasbourg. In the privacy of his studio, he tells us what seduces and motivates him in his work as a painter.
To those who don’t know him, Patrick Bastardoz introduces himself in a few simple, but very clear words: “I am a one hundred percent painter.“It was an encounter at the age of 17 that gave him the courage to take the plunge.”A very important meeting with a high school teacher. She opened the door for me and said, “go ahead!” She made me realize that there was a place for me in this world. Since then I’ve been there and I feel good there.”
He feels good in painting, to the point of coming to the studio every day. “It’s in the square meter, in front of my canvas, that I feel exactly where I should be“, he explains. And since his beginnings, he has experienced a strange phenomenon: he never paints a single painting. “I never paint a single painting at a time, when I paint, it’s in series, I can’t fight against it, it’s the engine of my work.”
For several years, he has opted for oil paint, but he always applies a medium that accelerates drying and also creates a transparent glaze, which gives lightness and depth to the painting.
Deepening, triturating a subject in all directions can lead this painter to series of thirty or forty canvases on the same subject, as for the cathedral of Strasbourg, construction sites and industrial sites.
His inspirations and references come from the 17th century, the golden century of Dutch painting with masters like Rembrand, Van Goyen, Pieter de Hoor…”I draw from it ideas, lights, atmospheres that speak to me and respond to what I am looking for in painting.”
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For a long time, recognizes Patrick Bastardoz, he painted without asking any questions. Today, in my fifties, it’s different. The great philosophical questions have been answered, such as “Why am I painting?“. Today the answer is clear: “I want to leave something behind me, it reassures me, it makes me happy and it reassures me.” At the question “do you have to know how to make a mistake or even give up?” he replies laughing “Yes of course, it’s part of learning.“
After twenty-five years of work, his work is already substantial and recognized, both in Alsace and elsewhere in France and abroad. Bertrand Gillig, his main gallery owner, has exhibited him regularly and for a long time in his gallery rue Oberlin in Strasbourg. The latter will also offer an exhibition with works by the artist, devoted to buildings, in Sélestat, in a new cultural place, “The Powder Magazine”March 17, 18 and 19, 2023. The artist also works with a gallery in The Hague in Holland, another in Germany, in Metz, Mulhouse and Paris.
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Recently, Patrick has taken up engraving, a new adventure, but he knows that he has not yet settled everything with drawing, which is essential to him and to which he would like to devote more time. In the meantime, his series of cathedrals, skies, construction sites, abandoned historic sites and factory remains delight fans of his work. And his.
