Today on the blog we’re excited to share the work of French painter Mathieu Arfouillaud. After having studied law at university and worked as a lawyer, he followed a three-year program at the Ateliers des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris to learn painting, and also obtained a diploma of Art at Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. He is now a full-time painter.

Brittany landscapes played a prevailing role in this journey and were the subject of his first paintings, before becoming mere pretexts for visual experimentation. His landscapes can remind us of some Ecole Française paintings or the atmosphere of the Romantic movement of the 19th century while always displaying contemporary elements such as traffic signs, modern houses, or billboards.

Screens are his other source of inspiration. He began to paint with the quote of Alberti in mind “Painting is an open window on the history” and he tried to find out the new window of our time. Finally, he decided to work with representations of screens, considered as our contemporary window. The paintings belonging to the « Ecrans » (« screens ») series synthesize these two windows by combining landscape paintings and visual signs belonging to the screens universe. These visual signs are the elements revealing the operation of the screens: test charts allowing colors to be calibrated, glitches deconstructing the landscape. Screens become part of the landscape itself. The glitches disturbing the landscapes from the « Terres gastes » (« Barren lands ») series refer to screens as well. Likewise, broken screens can also appear under the « Pays4g+s » series landscapes : Those landscapes are painted over or aside abstract or monochrome fields which evoke dysfunctional screens.

See more works by following the artist on Instagram.