About Alexis Toublanc, French visual artist

I don’t paint what I see. I explore what I feel.

Biography

Alexis Toublanc lives and works in Capbreton, in the Landes region of France. His relationship with art developed gradually, outside any formal artistic education. During his psychology studies, which he pursued through to a master’s degree, he spent time among art school students and gradually grew closer to photography and painting. He became interested as much in the works themselves as in what they provoke in those who look at them: the way we perceive an image, give it meaning, and react to what it shows us.

Painting first appeared occasionally, alongside photography. Early experiments, and the responses they drew, encouraged him to continue.

Then came a decisive moment. A profound emotion gave rise to the conviction that painting now had to become central to his life. He chose to devote his time and energy to it fully — this period of transition is notably marked by “Grand Tomahawk”, made entirely in acrylic, in a language still different from the one he works in today.

Since then, Alexis has pursued a practice built on experimentation and on observing what emerges during the process of painting itself. Surfing, which has played a major role throughout his life, accompanies this evolution and deeply influences his relationship to gesture, presence, and what lies beyond control.

Artistic Approach

I don’t try to paint what I see, but to translate what I feel in front of reality. Painting is, for me, a language that lets me approach a physical sensation and recover a more direct perception of what I feel, before that sensation is transformed into representation or interpretation.

I work from a direct contact with matter, more than from an idea to illustrate. The gestures can be broad or meticulous, the material dense, granular, sometimes almost sculptural. I leave the trace of the gesture visible, and accept that part of the process escapes me.

Surfing has deeply shaped this way of working. It taught me to read a force before trying to master it, to be fully present in the moment, and to accept what escapes me. I find that same tension in the studio: between intention and letting go, control and emergence.

The spaces that emerge in my paintings aren’t places I set out to represent. They build up gradually, in successive layers, until they find a balance between depth, light and matter. When a piece evokes a landscape or architecture, it’s a consequence of the process — never its starting point.

Each canvas grows out of the one before it and pushes me further: experimenting with freer, more intuitive ways of painting, closer to what I feel. Until the painting no longer needs me. The piece can become something beyond my own experience: each viewer can then recognise something of their own in it, without any single reading being imposed on them.

Available for exhibitions, gallery representation and collaborations.