"My works echo the suffering of victims of discrimination, injustice and the denial of human rights. The more severe my pain, the more important
it is to balance my compositions and expand my palette. In response to social chaos, to the bankruptcy of humanist values, I feel the urge to gather my strength. By mobilizing my knowledge of classical techniques (glazing, rigour of composition and golden number) I play my score on the canvas in total freedom. The colours in their sumptuousness and refinement accentuate the poetry. I am constantly in search of nuances and harmony of tones, which is why I make my paintings from natural pigments and some of my brushes.
My characters often bathe in the light and colours of the Caribbean and sometimes get lost in the vastness of the frozen steppes.
I have the blood of black slaves and Russian princes. This is why my characters, inspired by Léon Gontrand Damas, James Baldwin, Frantz Fanon or Fiodor Mikhaïlovitch Dostoïevski and Nicolas Vassiliévitch Gogol, have crossed the chaos to emerge within a moving and bold chromatic.
My painting, full of mysteries, subterranean sensitivity and adventurous signs, literally searches the bursting of the being in poignant,
allusive and subtle compositions. Often during the course of a hurricane, it pushes me to let go to unexpected limits and risk a dive into
the mental underground.
Concerned not to offend the eyes of others, I have chosen in the work I present to paint human tragedies by infusing them with humour and hope. My painting is expressionist, figurative and poetic.
I apply and synergize the bodywork painting techniques experimented in my father's workshop. It’s the same thing in the garden
of my great-grandmother or in the pharmacy where I learned how to make medicines. I work with yellow ochre wood and sandalwood, iron,
cloudy or brushed lime. Fascinated by the Italian soil, it covers the walls of my studio.
For several years now, I have had a strong desire to create sensory and interactive journeys through multifaceted installations that will combine painting, engraving, sculpture, ceramics, photography and video. To touch the souls of visitors, to challenge them, to question them so that they come out alive."
The Art of Didier Meynard,
"From the appearance of chaos to the seats of power"
In the impossible and in the unthinkable, the painted beings of Didier Meynard wander around alive. Clothed with space, they are made of stains, puddles, wefts, and wakes. Partial, haggard, ghostly and indestructible, they inhabit the vastness. They cross the expanse, and the expanse crosses them. Passing through all the places, they have no place to exist, except that of high painting. Each of them correspond to a precarious and metamorphic, tiny and fragile state. They will probably be destroyed as soon as they appear, because they are unseated. Plenitude serves to repel the gaps when they abandon themselves to the infinity of their shortcomings. They have lost all their support in prison homes, in a state of chaos, in a vertical sumptuousness. Thus painting, charged with mystery and unspoken, meaning and nonsense, subterranean sensitivity and adventurous signs, is a mirror of existence more real and true than the ill-fated appearance of things.
Didier Meynard literally searches the bursting of the being in an allusive and subtle, poignant and offbeat painting, always at high risk. It seems like a border adventure, a letting go of the end of the boundaries, a bitter dive into the mental underground. Here and there are hard traces of secret bruises, burns with vital questions, and vacuum throws. Within an inventive and moving chromatic, bold and modest.
Didier Meynard's relentless seats of power, battle paintings, or terrible terribly painted objects, are empty of love and presence. They sometimes bleed with art and silence. They damage the bad powers, because each siege creates a muted drama, swears a past distress, and marks a sinister farce. Each siege installs a mortal and deadly character, a haughty executioner and a derisory puppet. Each seat is a fatal scenography, with a tragic destiny.
Didier Meynard dislocates the pictorial va-de-soi. His sharp, graphic and vivid painting is born from the pre-verbal foundations, and digs a wild writing of disfigurement, so that the enigma of existence and the impossibility of being like others, even from a distance, never disappear.
His charged creations are the ephemeral, unexpected and emerging figures of an ever-present elsewhere, and of a reality always in perdition.
Meynard dares to get lost in it.
He also has a sense of distance. He knows how to put the ego on the horizon of the ordinary affect, and of the expected creation. Thus art gains a solid recalcitrant, and a very beautiful painter.
Christian Noorbergen
Preface to the exhibition catalogue at Château de Carrouges (Orne) 2013
Didier Meynard's life
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1960 Birth in Bar-le-Duc (Meuse). Childhood in the Aube at Vendeuvre-sur-Barse
1969 Discovers Miro, Braque, Picasso, Brueghel and Rembrandt in Mr. Burger's class, Paul Bert School in Troyes
1974 First gouaches. Stay in Guadeloupe
1975 Discovers jazz
1979 Diploma in pharmacy preparation, specialising in phyto, homeo and aromatherapy
1980 Arrival in Paris. Begins painting after visiting the Dali exhibition at the Centre Pompidou. Studies the manufacture of paints.
1983 Study of philosophies and religions. Meeting with Dominican Father Dominique Vallée.
1987 Travel to the Cyclades
1988 Meets the painter Michel Geminiani and becomes his assistant for several years. Stay in Greece
1989 Start of work on birds based on Stravinsky's "L'oiseau de feu" at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées.
1990 Stay in India. Introduction to the techniques of miniatures.
1992 Fire in the workshop building (Paris XVI). Destruction of about thirty paintings and 200 works on paper.
1993 Trip to Antwerp. Paintings after the Parable of the Blind of Brueghel
1994 Stay in Amsterdam, visit of museums
1995 Stay in Madrid. Visit of the Prado Museum: study of the black paintings of Goya and the dome of the church of San Antonio de la Florida
2000 Stay in London, visit of museums
2004 Stay in Barcelona, visit of museums
2009 Stay in Italy, visit of museums
2010 Stay in Crete, visit of the chapels, photographic documentation of the frescoes from the 13th to the 18th century
2013 Stay in Lisbon, visit of museums...
Educational interventions
1989-1993
Animation of the plastic arts workshop, Maison de l’enfance – city of La Courneuve
Creation of mural frescoes : Joliot-Curie, Saint Exupéry, Paul Domer and Langevin Wallon schools.
Realization of giant hopscotch in the playground with the children of the Anatole France and Robespierre schools.
Realization of mobiles based on the Calder exhibition.
Sculpture and molding work based on the Giacometti and Bottero exhibitions, and a visit to the Zadkine workshop.
1991
Educational interventions at the Pontgirard Gallery (Monceau-au-Perche, Orne) with eight schools in the region.
Creation of collages and paintings based on the visit of my exhibition. Birds' theme work.
Compositions about music with collages and gouaches.
1993
Six four-day educational interventions for the Halt'Art association : Parietal art workshop and rock paintings with children from 8 to 12 years old. Houilles, Boulogne-Billancourt and Asnières schools.
Rock paintings : introduction to techniques. Use of pigments.
Research work with children on animal signs and symbols based on a visit to the Lascaux cave and other caves in the region in collaboration with archaeologists.
Realization with children of rock paintings using the original techniques : pigments, rubbing, prints and fingers.
1995
Educational interventions at the Pontgirard Gallery (Monceau-au-Perche, Orne) with ten schools in the region.
Introduction to the techniques of painting manufacturing from pigments.
Introduction to molding from animal sculptures. Explanation of casting and patina techniques.
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Press
Art Tension N°19: December 1990, text by Françoise Monnin
Galerie Checura Forestier Exhibition
Maison française: February 1995
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Connaissance des Arts N°570: March 2000, Eric de Montbel Exhibition
Upstreet#17: March 2000, Eric de Montbel Exhibition
text by Renaud J. Bergonzo
Azart N°24: January 2007
Galerie Joelle Possémé Exhibition
Côté Ouest N°88: June July 2010
Galerie Artémise Exhibition
Didier Meynard draws the incessant ballet of passers-by, those we meet and don't look at. To suggest their mysterious and light presence, this eternal traveller makes tempera and casein on Japanese papers or engraving. L.C.
Pays du Perche N°13: June December 2010
Galerie Artémise Exhibition
Engravings in all their "states", the result of a production by Didier Meynard in line with his Silhouettes series, and Alain Controu.
It's beautiful and mysterious.... Nathalie Fay
L'Echo Républicain: Sunday, July 7, 2013, text by Anne Lise David
Château de Carrouges Exhibition