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Hugues Chevallier was born in France, into a family of musicians and songwriters. He received his degree from the Ecole des Beaux Arts [School of Fine Arts] in Paris in painting and architecture. In the open environment of his family and his college studies, Hugues found a natural outlet for his creativity in several different artistic areas. As an architect, he was responsible for the conception and design in many projects including private residences and a luxury hotel in the Paris region. At the same time, he designed and produced CD cover layouts for a music production company, and in his spare time performed as a saxophonist with several of the many jazz bands and Brazilian music groups on the Parisian music scene.In the 1980s, Hugues had the opportunity to move to and settle in California. He was part of an architectural team involved in the conception, design, and building of an estate winery complex in the Napa Valley region. Among the many friends he made on the West Coast was a talented European stone carver, for whom Hugues created several drawings of sculpted panels and other decorative elements that later became part of the interior decorating elements of private homes in Las Vegas and Los Angeles. As a result of a personal interest in finding the best way to display works of art, Hugues developed an entirely new method for framing pictures, based on architectural principles. This framing technique received a patent in the US and in Canada in 1999. During this time, Hugues began to explore figure painting more deeply, devoting his time and effort to developing a personal vision in the field of the visual arts. His solid sense of composition, strengthened by a thorough experience in architecture, is both evident and particularly enjoyable in his artworks. The deliberate use of a significant atmosphere and setting is also striking in many of his subjects. Hugues is primarily inspired by the works of Chardin, Giorgio Morandi, Roy Lichtenstein, Nicolas de Stael, and also by the spirit of the Cubists, or Constructivists, for their specific approach, which is both abstract and figurative at the same time. An impassioned photographer, Hugues uses the immediacy of this art form to grasp, through visual composition and light, the same abstract elements hidden within the very texture of concrete reality.In his creative intentions - which he strives to renew again and again - one can observe a relentless endeavor to developing and secure relationships in his compositions and expression among the various art forms that have become integral to his life and work.
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Still Lifes & Floral Compositions
If we begin from the standpoint that, in the art of painting, a large part of the skill consists in choosing what to paint, then the artist must produce, through an arrangement of objects, something that is worth translating into the realm of painting -- an attractive composition of things which, through the artist's eye, fit perfectly into his vision.
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Landscapes & Cityscapes of Rome
If the subject is a landscape or cityscape, I choose what to paint by invoking the potential visual qualities of, for example, a certain scene, ray of light, or suggestive perspective. Then I work in abstract as long as possible, and only at the very end turn to the figurative, revealing the harmony of trees or buildings and their inter-connected masses and shapes.
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Studies After the Masters
When preliminary steps are made in the proper way, the act of painting itself is carried through more successfully, regardless of the technical difficulty each particular artwork to be may present.
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Drawings & Sketches
I create in this state of mind, allowing each stroke to tell visually the silent story of the painting or drawing. Composition is so strong and important in creating a picture, that I try as much as possible to look at it as an abstract painting hidden behind the figurative reality of the objects.
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Portraits & Face Studies
I often experience when I show my artworks that the appreciation of most spectators lies first and foremost in the aesthetic attraction to the "invisible" in the Painting -- the poem behind the picture.
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