Interview by Jimon

1-Where did you grow up, and where do you live currently?  I was born in Moigny. It is a rural village south of Paris. Today, I live and work in Saint Maur sur le Loir, in a house that my family has owned for several generations. It is a charming hamlet on the banks of the Loir. It is located 130 km from Paris.

2-How would you describe Alain Ponçon?  I had a complicated childhood where confidence in myself was not encouraged. I escaped by dreaming a lot. I developed a great sensitivity. I love nature very much, and I suffer from seeing its destruction. I find it difficult to accept institutions and power. Today, as I grow older, I simplify things by concentrating on my work as a painter.  Doubt is always present, but I am aware of how lucky I am to be inhabited by this mysterious passion for art.

3-Did you have any official training for art?  At the age of 12, my parents enrolled me in a municipal art school run by the painter Serge Vincent, who also worked as a cartonnier for the Aubusson tapestries. For three years, in Paris, I studied perspective. I have nothing left of it! Between the ages of 17 and 20, I met two artists with whom I worked for a while. One, Chomo, was a fantastic and unclassifiable artist who had broken with the official art system, and the other a marginal priest and easel painter. The latter left no trace.  They were diametrically opposed artists who opened up different horizons for me.

4-How long have you been making art and what lead you to start?  Like many other artists, I have been painting since I was 6 or 7 years old. I don’t know what brought me to this mode of expression. When I was about 10 years old, I did my first painting on a canvas, it was a fishing port, painted on a kitchen towel!

5-Is there any reality behind your paintings or are they purely fantasy? I like my paintings to have several possible interpretations. I spend a lot of time looking at them. I dialogue with the canvas. Sometimes it is the viewer who reveals the content of my paintings to me. The artist is a ferryman. Marcel Duchamp wrote “a work of art must be looked at to be recognised as such”.

6-Have you ever come across a piece of art that you could not or did not want to stop looking at? My memory is rich with many paintings from all eras. Wheneve I can, I visit museums and galleries. In a museum there are always two or three works that particularly touch me, in front of which I remain fascinated, time seems to stop.

7-How did you acquire your style? The style has to impose itself. When I am faced with a blank canvas, I am like when I started, not knowing if my painting will be successful. The older I get and the harder I work the more dissatisfied I am! Style cannot be decreed. It exists or does not exist in an artist.

8-What influences you as an artist? I listen to my desires and my intuitions. Each painting has its own story. I am the only one who knows it. Then I forget and the painting exists.

9-What kinds of art hang on the walls of your home? I have many paintings from artist friends and works I buy. The last one is a beautiful ceramic that my wife and I bought at a charity exhibition for autistic artists. There is a deep emotional connection with each of the works that hang on the walls of the house.

10-How do you describe success as an artist?  My success is modest! I am happy when someone buys one of my paintings. I know they will take care of it. As for success, it is illusory and ephemeral, even if we imagine that the paintings are made for eternity.

11-Do you have a place/person/thing that you visit for inspiration?  No, I don’t really have places that inspire me. Everything happens within me.

12-Name three things you can’t live without in your studio?  Essential: tubes of paint, canvas, and charcoal.

13-If you could have dinner with 3 artists living/dead who would be at your table?  I really like this question… I will invite Georges Rouault, Chaïm Soutine and one of the artists who painted the Lascaux caves  I would have many other artists to invite.

14-How would someone find you on Social media?  Instagram @alainponcon

15-Please name the first thing that comes to your mind while reading the following:

Art=J’aime

Food=With friends to share

Sports=I’m not too sporty, except in the garden

Politics=Politics is very complicated. Between my dreams and the economic reality, I don’t know where to stand

Poor=A great injustice

God=I believe that the first artists were shamans. Of course creation is related to spirituality.

Rich=I don’t know if wealth brings more happiness? But it is better to have money

Luxury=When luxury produces beauty of course I love it

Sex=Vast subject!

Picasso=Picasso was a great virtuoso of the 20th century! But he is not the only one

Religion=Religions belong to our history and therefore to the history of art. I don’t have a specific religion. If I had to choose one, I would perhaps be animist for a better relationship with nature