Above: Xavier Mouche, La Belle Vie Parisienne, 2023. Acrylic painting, framed, 45 x 55cm. $780. Courtesy: the artist.
Inspired by tales shared by his grandparents about their stay in Paris in the early 1900s, Clare Valley based artist Xavier Mouche has captured a hazy vision of the Belle Époque, the work La Belle Vie
Parisienne executed in his distinctive style. Though his art training in Auckland, Sydney and Paris emphasised representationalism, the artist has forged his own path, stating that “my painting style now endeavours to combine a more primitive ‘Art Brut’ and naïve style with a touch of realism”. Using delicate line-work, the artist picks out tableaux of everyday life – a couple stroll peacefully along the Seine as an off-kilter Eiffel tower tumbles towards a first meeting, while elsewhere friends embrace or dance to the sound of piano playing.
Mouche has artfully balanced his use of detail and abstraction in this work, an economy of line emphasising body language and mood, many of the figures’ features lost to time. The use of greys and sepia tones accentuates this removal in time and space, placing the happenings firmly in the realm of memories. What remains is a sense of joy and conviviality, of good times had, never to be forgotten.