CHRISTIAN CHOISY - WHAT YOU SEE IS WHAT YOU GET!
TODAY SOME FIFTY YEARS AFTER HE BEGAN DRAWING AT THE SPRIGHTLY AGE OF EIGHT, CHRISTIAN CHOISY IS THE TOAST OF THE ART WORLD! NOT THAT INTERNATIONAL RECOGNITION MATTERS A GREAT DEAL TO THIS ARTIST, WHO LIVES TO PAINT, RATHER THAN THE OTHER WAY AROUND. HIS PREDILECTION FOR THE ABSTRACT LEADS HIM TO PLACES HE SCARCELY KNEW EXISTED; A QUEST WHICH NOURISHES THE SOUL AS MUCH AS IT DELIGHTS THE EYES – CREATING CANVASSES WHICH REACH OUT AND GRAB YOU!
Minimalist style, Choisy avoids provocative colours and effects in favour of subtler tones and impressions. His work is difficult to categorize; like all great artists, he stands alone, à la Nicolas de Staël.
This Saint Paul painter uses his unfettered imagination to render the suggestive; half-thoughts, which he invites you to finish; a  Provence sky, a pregnant woman perhaps, each canvass achingly personal and challenging to the imagination.
At 60, the artist is now in search of absolute simplicity, his canvasses laid as bare as his soul; some place where figurativeness ends and abstraction begins.
“My work hints at a subject while the atmosphere remains abstract. I like to offer an impression of reality, without ever leaning too heavily on a single form. I invite people to imagine what they see and build enough of a foundation to help them. I’m not interested in reality. Everything I paint comes from inside of me, what I know about the subject and not what a subject really is”.
A MENTOR AND A PATRON...
For Choisy, the artist’s life he leads today can be traced back to his childhood in old Bordeaux, when one day he asked his parents if he could have drawing lessons. His first teacher would be the first of many influential artists in his life. “It all began in that old Bordeaux studio. My child’s eyes lit up to a fantastic new world. My teacher painted animals I remember, he had a remarkable talent and I learned to draw surrounded by animals. He transmitted his passion to me.” A passion Choisy has never lost. “I wanted to be a painter from that moment on. I learnt on my own by copying the style of the old masters. It took me a few years to discover my own style and come up with more personal work.” His enthusiasm proved contagious a dozen or so years ago when a patron of the arts set him up in his first studio to gave him his first chance. Finally he was able to live from his work. Luck then led him to Saint-Paul-de-Vence, ‘If luck really exists?” he whimsically notes. He was immediately won over by this charming village full of budding artists. Today, he runs the rule over three galleries: two in Saint-Paul-de-Vence one in Honfleur, a luxury which means he doesn’t have to make concessions. “I don’t have to be part of the “system”. Most galleries are looking for a “product” rather than a body of work; a painter’s creativity is therefore conditioned by commercials success. But I can’t work like that, wich is why I have my own galleries, to escape this sort of dogma. I intend to remain a free spirit”