François Carrière de Glencoe

In the artist's words

“Without emotion, there is no life.”

Born in Lille in 1959, François Carrière lives and works in the Dordogne region. A self-taught artist, he discovered drawing through his godfather, Joël Carrière, a student at the Lille School of Fine Arts. Caricature and then India ink were his first experiments, before a professional life focused on helping others distanced him from his creative pursuits.
After abandoning medical studies due to a lack of passion, he became a home-care nurse. Drawing remained a constant presence, at times, like a personal necessity. In 2014, he picked up a paintbrush to decorate his new home: unknowingly, he opened a window onto painting.

From 2022 onward, after his retirement, painting took on a central role. He instinctively returned to drawing and then to brushes. The act of painting became a form of resistance and inner reclamation.

**Painting to Stay Achieve.**

This vital necessity is one of the foundations of his work. François doesn't seek to tell his story, but rather to transform what flows through it into pictorial matter. The canvas becomes a space where emotion can be deposited, displaced, deconstructed, and then reconstructed.

Self-taught, he freely experiments with materials: coffee, gesso, fabric, crumpled paper, acrylic pastes. Coffee holds a unique place. Its warmth and organic nature evoke an intimate memory, a tenderness akin to Proust's madeleine. Matter becomes memory.

Starting in 2023, François began exhibiting his work to the public. In early 2024, the arrival of color ushered in a new period, profoundly marked by his admiration for Vincent Van Gogh. Landscapes and abundant compositions introduced color as a vehicle for emotion, while exhibitions multiplied.

But François refuses to confine himself to a single style. His painting is nourished by literature, music, film, memories, and encounters. The worlds of Martin Harníček and Hubert Selby Jr. accompany an evolution toward a denser, more introspective style. The influence of Francis Bacon is evident in this desire to bring forth the human element beneath the surface of appearances.

**Beauty is no longer enough. We must go beneath.**

The flesh then takes on increasing importance. Skin, desire, violence, vulnerability: the body becomes an emotional material. Red dominates, surfaces thicken, and the painting becomes more physical, almost organic.
François likes to say that he uses his brushes "like scalpels to seek out emotion beneath the skin." Painting becomes a form of autopsy of feeling, with the desire to reach what lies hidden behind appearances.

The world of David Bowie, particularly *Outside*, fuels this exploration. François has adopted the phrase: "Never play for the gallery." “Not to paint to please, but to explore.”

Before painting, he writes. A sentence, an idea, a feeling, or sometimes the vision of a canvas often constitutes the first creative act. Then come the music, the materials, the gesture, and chance. His painting is built on a dialogue between mastery and accident, thought and instinct, beauty and unease.

**The canvas becomes a place of confrontation.**

François does not seek to impose an interpretation. He wishes to provoke a reaction, sometimes ambiguous or uncomfortable. What matters is not only what one understands, but what one feels.

In 2025, he founded ART’9, then a non-profit gallery, extending his commitment to artistic creation and to fostering encounters between artists and the public. This period also marked his encounter with the world of Anna Kormilitsina, a sculptor, whose artistic journey he supports as an agent and patron.

François prefers not to speak of works, but of canvases that are built from matter and emotions. They do not seek to seduce, but to provoke an encounter. Ultimately, painting is about continuing to feel.