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From
the Tao Teh Ching:
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One who displays himself does not shine,
and One who justifies himself has no glory.
Therefore,the "Artist's Statement" is brief and
of no importance.
- One
who boasts of his own ability has no merit. Therefore
the "Methods and Techniques" are just that, they
are tools and do not elevate my talent in any ways.
- One
who parades his own success will not endure.Therefore
the list of "Shows and Exhibitions" is just a
list of where my work can be seen, it is not a sign of success
or any great accomplishments.
Hence,
a man of Tao does not set his heart upon them.
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Artist's
Statement
I
don't speak about myself, I work in silence.
I paint and I draw, I don't write about my art; nobody asks
the author of a book to paint a picture about it, why do people
want a painter to write statements about his art? In a
book called The Art of Dreaming, Don Juan tells Carlos
Castaneda, "... most of our energy goes into upholding
our own importance... trying to maintain
the illusory idea of our own grandeur..." A Buddhist
monk once said: "One shouldn't speak unless one can improve
on silence." I believe writing about
"Myself" "my Ego" and "My Art"
is pretentious and not going to improve my paintings.
I
am very saddened by the fact that erotic 'art' became so vulgar
and so explicitly graphic. I have seen pictures of oral sex,
erections and open vaginas in so called "erotic art exhibitions".
I think those artists have the right to paint whatever they
want in the name of freedom, I just don't think pornography
should be called eroticism. There is more erotism in the
glimpse of an exposed knee or a revealed thigh than in a pair
of opened legs.
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"An
erotic body is a clothed body." |
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Methods
and Techniques
No
airbrushes nor spray or sponges are used in Roger's work: only
brushes. He starts by applying base flat colors to delimitate
different areas, then with very small brushes starts the detailed
areas and graduations.
His
NON-erotic works are mainly urban themes, industrial
settings or objects. A still life is more likely to be a rusty
piece of metal than a bowl of fruits on a table! Cuteness is
anathema and - in his words- "visually sickening"... He loves
textures and strange places or objects. He takes long walks
with his digital camera in old industrial areas in search of
inspiration for his paintings.
For
his erotic works, Roger never depicts nudity, he works
from photographs of female friends taken and cropped and "recomposed"
to his idea of what the final picture should look like. Photography
is just a guide, a source, and a finished piece rarely looks
like the original print; often several elements of different
photographs are combined in the creation of a single piece.Because
Roger wants to represent on canvas the feeling and sensation
of erotism and nothing else, there never is a recognizable human
face to be seen in his art. The super tight framings of his
compositions are more like an erotic still life than a human
figure per se.
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Bio
Born
in Belgium (Brussels) 1953, Roger left Europe at the age of 20 years
old for New York and spent many years there as a freelance cartoonist
for major US magazines such as Cosmopolitan, TVGuide, Playboy and many
more. Moved to California in the 1980's where he also started to work
in the advertising field (notably at the famous GBS agency in San Francisco)
at the same time he created 2 graphic novels for Last Gasp publishing
and created many illustrations for the San Francisco Chronicle. Roger
was working mainly with pen and ink, and later with digital images on
computer. He wanted a radical change and decided to direct himself towards
fine art, his style of painting is totally opposed to the comic strip
style of his commercial work: the cold clinical nature of realism is
an opportunity to 'just immerse yourself in the work, it's like meditation.
Also admires the Flemish masters such as Vermeer and Breughel and
their love of precision and details. "they were the hyperrealists
of their time".Roger now lives in San Francisco, California
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Shows
and Expositions:
(Past,
present and upcoming exhibits)
- March
31-June 30,2006 "7 Squared" Group show at The
Offices of the Small Business Association of San Francisco,
CA
- October
2005 "San Francisco Open Studios" weekend (and
full month exhibition) at Market Street Gallery, San Francisco,CA
- Aug
31st,2005 "8th Annual One Night Stand" at SomArts
Cultural Center, San Francisco,CA
- July
2005 " "4Corners-III":Group show of San Francisco based
artists at the"Mariposa Square Building" Show sponsored
by several galleries simultaneously. Licot represented by
"6 four 6 Design Gallery"
- July-Aug/Aug-Sept
2005 "CityArt Gallery " Two Consecutive month long exhibits.
828 Valencia Street, San Francisco,CA.
- April-may
2005 "International Warehouse" Suojiacun Art village/ Beijing
Intern'tl Art Camp BIAC, Tongzhou district, Beijing, CHINA
- Feb-Mar
2005 "Art of the Erotic" show at Market Street Gallery,
San Francisco, CA (presented by MesArt)
- Nov
2004 "Cornucopia of Art": Group show of Artist X-Change
Gallery
- Oct
2004-Jan 2005 "ArtSoup" : Group show of California artists
at the Bayshore Film Studio, Bayshore, CA.
- Sept
-October 2004 "Erotic City Show" : Exhibition of visual
works by San Francisco Bay Area artists at the ArtistX-Change
gallery. San Francisco, California
- March
2004 "4Corners-II":Group show of Californian San Francisco
based artists at the"Mariposa Square Building" Show sponsored
by several galleries simultaneously.
and..if
you are in San Francisco, Roger has work constantly exhibited
at the Artist X-change Gallery, 3169 16th St. San Francisco.
Ph: (415)-864-1490 (see link below)
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Trivia:
Favorite
( fiction and non-fiction) books, writings, texts: The
Bhagavad Gita, Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, Tao Te Ching
by Lao Tzu, l'Etranger by Albert Camus, The Gospel of Ramakrishna,
Conversations with God by NealeDonald
Walsh , "The
Masks of
God" by Joseph Campbell, "The Tao of Physics"
by Fritjof Capra, La Invencion de Morel
by Adolfo Bioy Casares,
and a few more.
.Favorite
movies , tv, cinema, video:
here are a few: Baraka, The Last Emperor, The Third Man, Quest For
Fire, Tati:Play Time, Merry Chistmas Mr Lawrence, Apocalypse
Now, Ringu, Zentropa,"Stairway to Lenin"from Zbig Rybczynski, Jacob's
Ladder, Pedro Almodovar's iAtame! & Mujeres al borde de un
ataque de nervios, etc.
Favorite
artists:
here are a few: Maxfield
F.Parrish, Vermeer, Tamara de Lempicka, Ralph Goings,
Indian mystic painter Indra Sharma, John
Salt, Italian comic strip artist Guido Crepax, American comic
strip artist Milton Caniff and many more...
Things
said !: •Art has an enemy called
ignorance. (Ben Jonson) •The great artists
of the world are never Puritans,and seldom ever even ordinarily respectable.
(H.L.Mencken) •The idea of a Christian art is a
contradiction of terms. (Ernest Haeckel) •Art
is science in the flesh. (Jean Cocteau) •To
know how to draw is not to draw well. (Paul Gaugin) •There
is no exquisite beauty without some strangeness in the proportion.
(Francis Bacon) •If more than ten percent of the
population likes a picture, it should be burned, for it must be bad. (G.Bernard
Shaw) •Don't
be an art critic, paint! (Paul Cezanne)
LINKS
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Artists
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Misc
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Hiroko
Sakai Check
out her work; she's a great
artist! (Realism/Fantasy etc)
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Michelle
Bird is
a very old friend of mine,
she has great talent (and great legs!)
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Artmajeur.com
A
European based Virtual Gallery featuring many artists
from all over the world.
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David
DeRosa Not
just an old friend, but also POP impressionist extraordinaire!
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ZbigVision
(nothing to do with paintings) but everything to do
with superb cinematographic work of Zbigniew Rybczynski!
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DevilDio
Manuela,my
nice friend in Belgium, created that site fun/fantasy
for all ages
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Drouot
Cotation List
of officially quoted artists in
Dictionnary Larousse Drouot Cotation (Paris, France)
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Linda
Hoard, Fantastic
photorealism! perfection on canvas!
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World
Wide Arts Resource(WWAR)
Virtual
galleries |
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Zheng
Xuewu, Printmaker
and painter friend (based in Beijing, China)
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ArtworkSF
Art events/gallery (San Francisco) |
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