Francois Chartier (Born in 1950) worked in the advertisement world for more than 25 years as an illustrator and an art director, before he felt the need to pursue in greater depth his own artistic journey. After evolving in the advertising world he felt he was ripe enough to venture into the art business on his own and painting was the only logical direction he could take as his personal taste, experience, training and longings, had prepared him for this path. Since he has been tremendously interested in realism, it was natural that this was the direction his art should take, and it actually took. Although his paintings are realistic his goal is to create the sense of presence and illusion of depth beyond what is found in photographs through the play of the brush and the layering of mediums. His choice of subject for painting is usually dictated by the shape, rhythm, light, color, and shadow he obtains by staging people, flowers or objects together.
He’s drawn to painting large scale works where his subjects are given room to capture the viewer and always painted bigger then life size, and where life’s tiny details are revealed in their simplicity and beauty. Because of the amount of detail involved and the large scale in each painting, it is very important that he’s at peace with the subject before he dedicates hours of meticulous work to bring it to life. Although this means that his artistic output is reduced his goal is to insure that every painting accurately captures his vision and is of utmost quality.
