"Tant que nous n'aurons de visages" - Gabriel Morantin-Peinture-Octobre 2026

“How can we see the gods, so long as we do not have faces?” C. S. Lewis As a contemporary figurative painter, I am faced with the question and the practice of representing the human figure. Today, it seems extremely difficult to create a portrait without falling into the pitfalls of naïve or anachronistic figuration, abstraction, narration, or illustration.

PAINTING A MODERN PORTRAIT? Painting a figurative portrait already constitutes, for the contemporary artist, a form of risk-taking: a radical choice that runs counter to the spirit of the age. Indeed, the creation of a portrait begins with an encounter, an exchange with the subject, a human connection rather than a virtual one. Then comes an intermediate phase, perhaps the most important: the pause, the time for observation and waiting. Finally, the portrait finds its conclusion in the emergence of a new image. This image is different, yet similar. It is simultaneously the result of observation, memory, and time. The portrait thus becomes the locus of an encounter between what was seen, what was retained, and what was transformed by the painter's brushstroke.

PORTRAIT. TRADITION. TECHNIQUE. The choice of the portrait, its gravity, and its history compel the artist to enter into a dialogue with tradition. It is a matter of understanding, studying, and allowing oneself to be influenced by the great masters of the past: Titian, Rembrandt, Rublev. That is why I needed to find today's old masters. Between Paris, England, and Rome, that is where I found them. Since then, my desire and my passion are to pursue this quest: to represent the human face through a work that is at once beautiful, technically mastered, and enduring. The portrait then becomes an exercise in transmission. It is not merely a matter of reproducing a face, but of understanding what centuries of painting have built around it, and seeking how this tradition can still be alive today.