When looking at a work of art, it is not enough for it only to demand that one stands and contemplates as if to pick up the essence of a painting by osmosis. The work of a true artist grabs and transports the viewer to an alternate reality in which they are engulfed. The work of Patrick Girod is of this second kind. Working with a minimal palette—striking black forms on stark white ground are accented by daubs and areas of yellow, red, blue or green—his paintings are pared down to their utmost essence, rendering them expressive without extraneous detail. Girod’s primary painting technique is the dripping of oil paint onto the canvas. In some works these are left as statements of intent, but where he feels more work is needed Girod will overlay his images with pasted-on radiographies and more layers of oil paint.

Through building up the complexity, he adds depth and texture. However, the main intensity of emotion and movement remains with his initial marks that remain as the foundations of a creative manifestation.
Girod is able to express himself so purely due to his methods of preparation for the canvases. Before any marks are made, he takes an emotion, an event, a happening and works on it in his head, turning the thought over, exploring. Each is different; some periods of contemplation are fleeting, others take a long time, but when the time is right Girod moves immediately, marking the canvas rapidly in a state of mind somewhere between conscious and unconscious thought. He is opened to the process and can pour out his feelings uninhibited, directly onto the canvas.

His purity of expression is also upheld by his loyalty to oil paints, a medium whose color, texture and lustre cannot be reproduced by anything else.

Patrick Girod lives in both France and Switzerland, but paints in France, the country of his birth. His cultural origins taught him that he cannot lie with his art, and so he approaches it with authenticity and humility.

www.derisoart.blogspot.com

www.Agora-Gallery.com/ArtistPage/Patrick_Girod.aspx

  Some Flowers - Oil on Plywood 23'' x 8''