english

Patrick Ramont is a phenomenon, an enthusiastic artist, a passionate painter who succeeds in developing an idiosyncratic imagery that isn’t borrowed from anybody, neither formally nor regarding content. And this in a domain in which almost everything has been expressed, repeated and arrogantly copied.

He wields the brush to create a figurative world that is obvious and at the same time symbolic, with touches of magic that are immediately visible. But, when looked on attentively, they unfold in diverse waves of recognition.

He paints what he sees, what he suspects and senses behind the visible, what is part of his inner world and of his daydreams that are so fundamentally embedded in his existence.

This results in series of large canvases in which he e.g. expresses pain in surprising abstract imagery, which is both graceful and suggestive, or paints a female nude in an unusual colour palette and in a candid composition of an admiring and pictorially daring approach of a true-to-life reality.

The extraordinary radiance of many of his paintings is difficult to interpret straight away, because the style and the meanings of his scenes have barely or nearly never been seen before. They show a surprising profoundness and a peculiar view of something that reaches beyond the world of ordinary appearance.

This doesn’t mean that his imagery is inconceivable to us. It only means that in many of his canvases - and certainly in those exhibited here - there is more than merely shape and colour.

He clearly chose to show a number of paintings that reveal an important undercurrent in his oeuvre. They all deal with space and spatiality, with the three or five elements, with circles and depth, with light that bears many mysteries - also palpable ones - with plenty of boulders in surprising colours. Colours often avoided by artists, as they are quite difficult to wield.

Purple and bluish green contribute to creating a nearly magical atmosphere accentuated by the composition, the presence of visible and somewhat hidden circles, by darkness and light in an interesting dialogue.

‘I am a moon child, born at full moon’, Patrick Ramont says with unaffected and honest conviction showing composure and meaningful self-confidence.

This statement can explain the omnipresence of a shining and mostly triple circular motif in canvases of darkness and light, of shadows and shades, of reality and symbolism and of what is sometimes called the music of spheres.

Nature is an important motif in his creativity and is integrated in his paintings in a personal way that is seldom seen. To the extent that nature coincides with his perspective on beings and things and appears spontaneously when he is guided by his inspiration.

The same goes for concrete structures as well as for ethereal images of the moon and clouds, spheres, of his personal perception of corporality and of many items that refer to the sea in general and to the Ostend breakwaters and pier in particular.

He depicts a silent world, a multi-layered universe in which light is a roaming theme that arises from a number of sources, in which dragon eggs burst open and a roguish being appears, in which a medieval devil chuckles. The silent world before humans were there and next to it another world full of destruction caused by humans, the latter suggested by a broken pier.

Patrick Ramont paints images of alienation and at the same time a reality based on his perception of the world, fed by fantasy that is part of his artistic mind. As already mentioned, this is a world of radiating nudes, but above all of clouds and skies, depth and silence, stones with a propensity towards elliptical patterns - sometimes menhir-like - and brought to life by a strange luminosity. There are references to the sea, spheres evoking the trinity of water, fire and earth, circles showing his precision in using colours and creating transparencies, sensible and immense backgrounds inhabited by subtle presences and suggestions.

He creates dialogues and finds connections between fantasy and reality, between shape and content, between pure and authentic painting and his personal realm of ideas.

That which at first sight may seem strange and alien, afterwards turns out to be the reflection of a real and unaffected pictorial passion.

Hugo Brutin (a.i.c.a.)