Jean Claude Picard

Born in 1943 in Yugoslavia, Picard began his education as a poster and scene painter, and furthered his education as a freelance artist in many European countries. Since 1965 he worked as a full-time artist in Cologne, Germany, conducting several painting schools and international art seminars. He has been living and working in Spain since 2000.

In his youth, he discovered Provence, Roussillion and Catalonia as a painter’s paradise and he visits each region as often as possible. These austere landscapes with their tremendous light are the subject to his mostly large format paintings.

In rural scenes, between the sun-bathed hills and shady pinewoods, he has settled into the atmosphere that he needs to express his individual style. The refined surface structure he manages to achieve wonderfully represents the rousing buzz of the Mediterranean air.

Unconventional use of colour and a broad language of shapes are significant in his painting, suggesting the essence of the atmosphere rather than the reality of the eye’s view. Picard only works on his forays in nature with a sketch block and watercolour paints, converting his impressions to canvas with his elaborate technique in his studio.

He aspires to bring together his impressions of the origins of the landscape with an underlying sense of order, for which he uses prismatic patterns to enhance the shining colours and gentle hills. Spring and autumn are arranging themselves into an impression of the landscape, in all its beauty, for the viewer.