Meeting with Jean-Michel Poveda, painter, Gard

 

Blue skies, mountains, villages. Sometimes a few clouds in the sky and a few flowers in the foreground of the landscape. Clearly, Jean-Michel Poveda loves the region where he settled a few years ago: the Cévennes in the Gard department.
The painter lives in a small village north of Le Vigan and doesn't go much further to find his painting themes: "It's not my native region, but it's a region I've really fallen in love with," he explains simply.

The painter, born in Algiers the year most French people left (1962), comes from the Paris region, but it was while visiting friends in Ganges that he discovered the Cévennes landscapes, the colours, but also the people, even if, for the moment, they do not appear on the canvas.
The artist is already familiar with the South of France, having spent part of his childhood in Toulouse during the 1960s and 70s. But what he remembers most from his time in Toulouse is learning to paint… at home, watching his father paint in the living room, who gave him his first foundations in the art. Since then, the artist has felt a visceral need to express himself artistically.
He will therefore continue along this path in the Paris region: in parallel with his professional activity, he is taking a course at the ABC school in Paris (drawing and painting courses) and a visual arts course at the CNED (Technical initiation and creativity).

He is attracted to the color palettes of Impressionists such as Paul Cézanne, Claude Monet, Vincent Van Gogh and Berthe Morisot.

After years in the Paris region, he settled three years ago near Le Vigan, and it was there that he truly discovered the light of the South, specifically the Cévennes version. He paints nature, the kind that amazes him every morning when he opens his bedroom shutters. Then he goes for walks, and in 2023, he began to paint these distinctive landscapes: mountains that are clearly more than just hills, but not the high peaks of the Alps or Pyrenees.
More rounded mountains, greener too, landscapes where, more often than not, vegetation and sky meet.

His method for the moment is simple, and his perspective on these landscapes is still fresh: “I walk around a lot, I take photos and then I work in my studio, with oil on linen canvases, in a very classic way with a first layer which constitutes the sketch. I then attack with the oil pigments, patiently, seeking to define the pastes and transparencies little by little.”

The artist paints landscapes, but especially landscapes that show distant views, rounded mountains, and the varied greens of spring.
Sometimes villages. No people, no animals. “It’s not a deliberate choice,” he explains, “it’s just that this series favours remote places where they don’t necessarily belong.”

The artist plans to develop his work in two ways in the near future: he intends to work more outdoors and less in the studio. And he plans to dedicate another series to the inhabitants of this region.
Yet another way to show one's attachment to a rural region, which is endearing and ultimately always worth discovering.

 

Anne Devailly