Alain, a lover of painting and sculpture, Host at Nohô

At Nohô, every passion becomes an encounter. Not a demonstration, not a rigid explanation: a living, embodied experience, sometimes raw.

Alain has been a painter and sculptor for over 45 years. A long, instinctive journey, built on intuition, experimentation, and an urge to create that has never left him.

Can you introduce yourself?

Yes, my name is Alain and I’ve been painting for over 45 years. When I was a kid, around 11 years old, I already knew I would become an artist. Yet I came from a background that was absolutely unprepared for that. My first drawings, my first attempts… no one looked at them.

I believe that to be an artist, you have to believe in what you do and persevere. Aside from that, I’ve lived almost my entire life in Paris. I started in Marseille, then continued in Paris until recently. Today, I split my time between Avignon and Lisbon, since I have two places I call home.

What has your career path been like?

I had my first major exhibition at age 22 at the Grand Palais, as part of the Salon des Indépendants. After, I returned there a number of times afterward.

I started sculpting about 25 years ago. It’s actually quite recent, because at first I didn’t dare. And then one day, it just happened naturally. And I loved it.

How have your techniques evolved?

At first, I worked with India ink on white paper. That stems from my background: I studied general mechanics (BTS in mechanics). And, paradoxically, that helped me a lot.

Then I switched to oil. For the first ten years of painting, I worked exclusively in oil, with all the constraints that entails, but I loved it deeply.

And then, as often happens, the galleries pushed me toward acrylic. It was very difficult. I thought it was ugly, too colorful; I couldn’t get the colors to blend… for a year, I was miserable with it.

And then, little by little, I got the hang of acrylics—or maybe they got the hang of me; I don’t know. Today, I don’t work in oils at all anymore.

Your relationship with formats and painting

I work on standard-sized canvases, but I very often buy entire 10-meter rolls to create very large pieces, sometimes 2×4 meters.

Because at the beginning, at the Grand Palais, I arrived with a small 60×50 canvas… I was invisible. I realized I also had to occupy the space. Working on a large canvas is nothing like working on a small format. You don’t put the same things on it; you don’t work at the same pace, nor in the same physical relationship to the canvas.

But in any case, my work remains consistent. I have a personal style that I repeat, transform, push, and sometimes “torture.” And I think that’s what makes people recognize me. I don’t know how to do anything else. I don’t know how to paint seascapes or fields of lavender. And I’ve never been drawn to that.

Does your painting evolve over time?

Yes, but always with a sense of continuity. There are different periods: more colorful moments, more neon phases, and returns to earlier styles.

I like to revisit themes I explored 30 or 40 years ago and rework them today. But it’s no longer the same person tackling them. It’s a dialogue between my younger self and my older self.

And how did you get into sculpture?

It’s quite a unique story. I ran a gallery in Bastille for about ten years, where I exhibited sculptors. One of them, who was married to a Senegalese woman, said to me, “Come to Senegal; I’ll teach you how to sculpt.” I told him I didn’t know how. But once I was there, in his studio, I gave it a try… and I made my first sculpture. He told me, “You’re a sculptor.”

Since then, I’ve had a hard time saying I’m a sculptor, because it’s “only” been 25 years. After that, I went to Senegal very often, to Dakar, to an incredible studio with a true tradition of bronze casting. I worked under very physically demanding conditions, with extreme temperatures, furnaces, large teams… but with immense pleasure.

What materials do you sculpt with?

Bronze is an extraordinary material. Immortal, timeless. But it’s also very expensive. And since not all galleries could handle those sizes and costs, I turned to resin.

Resin allows for more freedom and more affordable prices. I continued to work on human figures, centaurs, horses—I’ve always loved the human form.

More recently, I’ve created small series of characters, between 20 and 25 cm tall, almost imaginary figures, somewhere between an elf and a comic book character. I’ve even started working with 3D for certain series.

Another way to experience painting and sculpture

On Nohô, art becomes a direct encounter with the artist. Alain offers gallery tours and discussions about his work.

These are moments when he focuses on explaining “how” he creates, rather than what should be understood.

Because for him, art cannot be explained: it must be experienced, felt, and lived.