Sur le chemin de Lammes

I like to walk with my grandfather to the hamlet of Lammes, on the path where we have our habits. We often fish trout in a small stream, the Créanton. Looking for snails after the rain and picking mushrooms provide excuses to stroll around. On the way to Lammes is also the orchard of Mr Labis. A magical place for animals. Sitting on an old oak tree lying on the ground, we spend long hours listening to nature and breathing the rhythm of the seasons. I learn silence and patience : key words to observe the countryside.The eurasian Jay does not appreciate our presence and lets us know it with open arms. We are also watched by the very territorial robin. A red glow in the branches is the squirrel, without a stop and always speeding. This nature at once close and elusive takes me to live simply, the senses awakened and inhabited by a flavor of freedom. Continuing our way, we find the fields, transformed into staging areas twice a year. We sometimes have the chance to see the common crane here. All the inhabitants of the village speak about it when they are here. Its visit lasts only a few days but the intensity of the emotion is great because for us it is the most majestic of birds. It is also the occasion, sometimes, to see foxes, deer or badgers. Walking by this way, they quickly run back to cover. When we reach the end of the road, we stop at the water. It is not just a pond; it is a refuge, feet in the water. The wetland is colonized by a multitude of bird species, sedentary or migratory. Silence, no stories to tell here! The animals sing themselves… Curiously, it is thanks to the creation of the Paris-Lyon TGV line that this area exists. The extraction of aggregates in a meander of the Armançon River dug a body of water, gradually colonized by birds. This is the Bas-Rebourseaux ornithological reserve. A wonderful ground to meet the great egret, the blue heron or the crested grebe.

– Drawing the next step – From the child I was in the 1970s and 1980s to the child I am in 2020, nothing has changed. I am always amazed by the encounters that nature wants to offer me. I spend hours alone contemplating and photographing the animals that show up at my blinds. I grew up, learned and felt with nature and in the midst of a wide variety of landscapes. Without my grandfather’s passion I would not have had this initiation. With both feet in the grass, I am always a child who remembers my encounters on the ways to Lammes. These are their portraits that I invite you to discover in the exhibition: «Sur le chemin de Lammes» This portrait gallery tells the animals that marked my childhood. I chose to focus on their posture and their shape, the movement. The light drawing on a coat or a branch gives me the subject, the frame, the field of action. Black. The slate of the school painting on which I print my collection of portraits. A portrait of wild and familiar animals, thick as nostalgia and intense as timelessness. A simple black and white, for animals that don’t pose. They just pass…. If the environment disappears from the image, it is better to invite you to appeal to your childhood. Find the movement and its path. Remember this moment of grace, sketch it out; it belongs to you.