I was born in 1955 on the Belgian border near Lille. I studied visual arts on the other side of the border, in Tournai (St Luc Institute).

What I explore is the mysterious relationship between colours, masses, shapes, shadow and light. I want to see what happens in the transaction, in the arrangement, just like commitment between people. The group perception is never too far away.

Trying to restore the abstraction of feelings and emotions in their ineffability is what drives me.

Painting and sculpting are also, in a more archaic manner, the exercise of a purely plastic relation to matter, like the use of a particular dialect.

It is the observation, the listening, the contemplation and the breathing that count, the poetry, sometimes on the fringe, sometimes in the centre.

It is also the sidestep, the shift, the attraction or the drama which, like the violence of situations or actions, reveals a part of humanity, out of the ordinary, allowing us to understand.

Art, as I understand it, is a sensitivity to these relationships. It is not the mind but the heart, the compassion, the connivance, the complicity.

Whatever we take, seize, from life, the manner in which we do so, matters.

It is the stroke that exults, which gives, perhaps wrongfully, a moment of plenitude. The gestures that reassure or transport, in a transcended universe, notes that convey emotion, in a singular moment, interpreted or not.

Emotions speak to emotions in a language in which the unwritten grammar and syntax are malleable and interpretable. This essential approximation.

Everything is food for the artist's soul if he inhabits emotions, experiences and channels them with sincerity.

Bernard DUTILLEUL