Trades Artwork

Turquoise, gold and red trails: the palette of the Trade Paintings

Where does the turquoise come from that appears on almost all of the Trade Paintings ?

Place three of these wall arts side by side and the same hue returns, from the fuselage of a helicopter to the attire of a man on the move. This pale turquoise is not a palette whim. The Trade Paintings show professions that are practiced at altitude or offshore, and it is the color that the rarefied air and shallow water take on: a washed-out blue, almost bleached near the horizon, more saturated towards the top of the frame. It occupies the background, and against it stand out the helmet, the fin, the crest of a wave. Before even identifying the machine, you know that the scene takes place far from the ground.

On a wall, this cool dominant behaves like a window. It recedes, it breathes, it does not saturate the room as a full red would. This is what makes these images surprisingly easy to live with despite the harshness of the subjects represented, you can look at them every morning without getting tired of them. Placed on a light wall, they reinforce the sense of space. On a dark wall, the turquoise becomes luminous and takes the place of a source of light, which is well suited to hallways and poorly lit stairwells.

Gold is only placed on the illuminated edges and braids

The gold that outlines a fuselage, hull, or silhouette in the Métiers Paintings is nothing ornamental. Look where it settles: on the upper edge of a wing, on the rim of a helmet, on an epaulette, on the face of a wave, always from the side where the light of the end of the day falls. Elsewhere, the canvas remains dull, almost gray. The painter thus combines two golds, that of the setting sun of evening flights and that of the brass of insignia. The gold therefore never shines alone: it draws the outline of a movement and gives these scenes their warmth without turning them into ceremonial decorations.

A single jet trail is enough to ignite these Métiers Paintings

Look at the surface actually occupied by red and orange in the Métiers Paintings, it remains minimal. A trail behind a jet, a trim on a hull, a halo of an inflamed cloud, and that's all. This thrift is calculated. Red is here the color of combustion and alert, two things that these trades come into contact with without ever letting them invade the field. Reduced to an accent, it acts as a signal : the eye finds it first, follows the trajectory it draws, then returns to the background. It is this back and forth that creates movement.

This economy has a direct consequence at home. A minor warm accent blends with almost everything that makes up a room, light wood, fauve leather, a lamp's brass, a brick wall. Nothing to repaint, nothing to laboriously match. And if your stay lacks relief, these splashes of red and orange serve as punctuation, they are enough to awaken a completely neutral wall without imposing a dominant color on the entire room. It is often what is sought when one still hesitates to hang such an assertive image.

Métiers Paintings without a workbench or tool: the sky and the swell for a workshop

What is seen in place of the work surface and the tools?

A collection dedicated to professions expects hands at work, a workbench, well-organized tools. The Métiers Paintings do exactly the opposite: the setting is always the element traversed, a cloud ceiling, a gray swell, a curtain of tall grass. This is due to the very nature of these trades, which have no fixed location and carry their workplace with them. On these canvases, the workshop therefore holds entirely within a cockpit glazing, a hull streaked with salt, a field uniform strapped. One never sees the man without his environment.

For those who hang these images, the difference is considerable. A painted workshop remains a closed place, which closes the wall on itself. An open sky or a sea as far as the eye can see does the opposite, it pierces the partition and extends the room. This is exactly what is sought in an entrance without a window or in a cramped office, where one spends hours facing the same wall. These open horizons produce an escape effect that neither a portrait nor a still life will ever achieve.

Everything that goes beyond the horizon of the Métiers Paintings: drift, helmet, spar

A detail goes unnoticed until it is noticed: in the Métiers Paintings, the horizon line is placed very low, in the last quarter of the canvas, when it is not pushed outside the frame. The rest is sky or open water. A drift, a helmet, a spar stand out above the gaze, and one finds oneself placed below them, obliged to raise one's head, exactly as at the foot of a monument where the fighter is seen from below. Hung a little high, a canvas constructed in this way dominates the room and imposes silence.

How these stacked clouds behind an aircraft in flight push back the wall of a hallway

The way the sky is constructed changes the perception of a passage place. In the Art Murals, clouds are rarely compact, they open up in depth, stack several planes, let a streak of light shine through at the back. This foliage creates a real perspective, not just a flat image. Placed in a hallway, a clearing or a staircase, these places that one crosses without stopping, this kind of background visibly pushes the wall back and breaks the impression of a tunnel. The movement suggested by the trails and wakes also accompanies the pace of the passerby.

The scale of the Art Murals: a helmeted silhouette, an immense machine

Why are there almost no faces on these paintings?

This is the first thing that strikes you when you look closely at the Art Murals : the features are not there. A lowered visor, a helmet seen in three-quarter view, a shoulder, a back bent under the effort, sometimes a simple black silhouette backlit against the sky. What identifies the man is elsewhere, in the cut of the uniform, the inclination of the body, the hand clenched on a pole, all that the uniform shows of the function before the individual. The painter sticks to that. These paintings do not represent Mr. So-and-So, but the pilot, the sailor, the flag bearer.

The effect is very different from that of a portrait hanging on the wall. A face looks and ends up imposing its presence in the room. An anonymous silhouette, on the contrary, leaves room for free, everyone can project a father, a grandfather, a comrade, or themselves at twenty. This is what explains the emotional charge of these images in families where someone has served. You don't hang an unknown person, you hang a function that you have known closely, and the memory settles in the silhouette all by itself.

Drift, hull, pole: everything rises to the right in the Art Murals

Take these images looking only at the lines: in the Art Murals, almost everything rises from left to right. An aircraft climbing, leaving its trail behind it, a hull piercing the surface from the front, a pole that several arms straighten, a run tilted towards the top of the frame. Even the clouds follow this slope. None of these paintings makes its subject descend towards the lower corner, and this ascending diagonal, repeated from one image to another, is what makes them optimistic despite the harshness of the scenes. On a wall, this ascent draws the gaze upwards.

This orients the choice of room. An office, a study, a place where decisions are made: these silhouettes in action play a role there that a landscape would not play, that of a reminder of commitment. In a teenager's bedroom, they advantageously replace ephemeral posters with an image that will last for years. And in a living room, they are more readily hung alone, on a clear wall panel, because they are images that require a little distance to deliver their scale report.

To whom do these silhouettes in uniform really speak?

The Art Murals do not only target connoisseurs capable of naming an aircraft as it drifts. They first touch those for whom the uniform evokes a family history, those who have served, and adolescents who dream of a commitment. But they also speak to those who know nothing about all this, because what is read first is not equipment, but a shared effort, arms stretched towards the same pole, an immense space to cross. The subject is technical, its reading is not, and this allows them to be hung in a common room.

FAQ on Art Murals

Do you need to have worn the uniform to hang these paintings in your home?

No, and it’s rarely the case. These wall art pieces are first read as scenes of effort and immensity, a tiny man, a machine, a vast sky. You may know nothing about the devices depicted and still be captivated by this scale. Former military personnel recognize specific memories in them, others see courage and movement. The collection works on these two levels of reading, which explains why it is found as much in an office as in a teenager's bedroom.

Does the American flag present on some wall art pieces have its place in a French interior?

It appears as a motif of historical painting, just like a straightened pole or a battlefield sky. What the image tells is the collective gesture of raising something together, not a national affiliation. Many hang it for this reason, without a particular connection to the country. If the idea still bothers you, the collection includes subjects without emblems, flying devices, hulls emerging from the water, progression in tall grasses, which carry exactly the same meaning.

How do these wall art pieces differ from a collection of airplanes or boats?

A collection of machines shows the object, often in profile, like a technical drawing. Here the device is only a means, the subject remains the trade, therefore the man who practices it and the moment he acts. You see a maneuver, an emergence, a race, never a posed model. The light is dramatized, the trails and wakes tell a trajectory. This is the difference between an inventory of equipment and a scene, and the scene ages better on a wall because we continue to read something in it.