A Fantastic Conversation with Thomas Mainardi
courtesy of the artist
Thomas Mainardi is a French contemporary artist based in France. His work has been exhibited internationally in galleries and art spaces such as the Gallery Lendnine, the Art Bunker Gallery, World Art Dubai, the Luxembourg Art Fair, and elsewhere. I got the pleasure of asking Thomas about his favorite things about pop expression and if he has had any doubt about being an artist; plus much more.
UZOMAH: How does creating art help you be true to yourself?
THOMAS: Uzomah, Excellent question! Obviously, art in all its forms of expression and in my case mainly painting, allows to reach a certain level of authenticity through brushstrokes, painting knife, or even spray, to get closer to his unconscious by entering a form of meditation or sometimes a trance.
This creative process acts as a kind of meditative plenitude, and invites you to empty your mind completely and to give free rein to your imagination in order to reach a level of full awareness of yourself, your hopes and your fears, your fantasies as your demons, your dreams as your neuroses.
It is certain that art allows the artist to better understand himself and that it acts as a form of therapy in order to allow him to get closer to his subconscious and to heal his inner wounds...
U: What are some of your favorite things about pop expressionism?
T: I consider my work and the style that guides it, which I call Pop Expressionism, as a subtle blend of textures, brutal and impulsive projections and brushstrokes, like explosions of bright colors, a strange accumulation of superimposed materials, fine lines, and delicate shading and highlights, mystical, legendary or historical symbolism, romanticism and human psychology... And all this, halfway between Pop Art, abstract expressionism, and urban art since things have to be categorized.
"REMNANTS OF MELANCHOLIA" Mixed media, Gilding, acrylic paint, pigments, gesso, ink and Posca on canvas 120x120 cm - 2020
U: What is your selection process like in terms of materials such as brushes and paint? How does that make or not make a difference in how your final and desired outcome will be reached?
T: Another very good question! The technique is a central point in the chronology of the creative process, as well as the inspiration, the desired emotion, the choice of colors and shapes, the support or the format, the framing of the work ...
Of course, the choice of techniques is essential and allows to obtain different effects of textures, patinas, drips, transparency, shadows, and lightings ...
The slightly diluted or very liquid acrylic paintbrush, a fluid ink or a thick gesso, spray paint or oil pastel, gold leaf, or other mounted materials allow, by complimenting each other on the canvas, the wall, the wooden panel or any other support to obtain a chosen harmony, in a premeditated or sometimes intuitive and impulsive way.
The fine brush for precise details, thicker brushes for rougher effects, the spray for more or less vaporous or radical and fine effects depending on the size of the cap, ink for transparency and dilution effects, acrylic markers for regular and precise lines, dry or oily pastel for a brushed or rubbed effect on the surface of the support ...
It is a permanent evolution from the first intention until the final brushstroke that will complete the work.
U: Your color selection is very vibrant. Is your selection of colors decided before you paint or is the selection done at the moment?
T: The vibration, the reaction of colors to each other is essential at the heart of each work. Their selection is preponderant and their harmony is always a goal to reach, while always trying to renew myself. The work of color is part of my basic daily research work, in order to renew myself, while preserving my identity, my touch, a kind of common thread between the different pieces of the puzzle that my work forms.
Sometimes the intuition, the inspiration, and the trance of which I spoke previously carry me away in a movement and an unpremeditated excitement which sometimes leads me to make this or that choice instantaneously in an impulsive way, but other times this choice is very thought through and preselected before starting.
And finally, sometimes the choice is predefined and as the work progresses, I add colors in reaction to those already present on the canvas or the support.
It really depends on the paintings ...
"STRENGTH AND DETERMINATION" Mixed media, acrylic, spray paint, pigments, gesso, ink and Posca on glass panel - 90x65 cm - 2020
U: How do you use pop art to bring forth persons and objects in a more realistic way for the audience that is different from their everyday life?
T: When I paint, I don't try to reproduce reality identically like a hyperrealist artist would. I respect that but it doesn't suit me, nor does it interest me in terms of pleasure and artistic approach.
What interests and motivates me in my painting is to explore another form of expression passing different superimposed layers of materials and textures and different levels of reading and analysis.
What pleases me is precisely the fact that the background and the subject blend and merge, while vibrating in harmony, as in osmosis, as if to put each other in value and in the foreground.
courtesy of the artist
U: What do you wish for each person who views your art or buys your art experiences?
T: I first want to create a beautiful and luminous work full of poetry and mystery, between shadow and light ... above all to express my poetic, symbolic, mystical, or psychological message at first ... Or a set of these different factors.
Then my second objective is to create an emotion and/or a reflection in the viewer or the collector of the painting, facing the mystery of the work in order to bring him to understand where I wanted to take him ... or well sometimes, on the contrary to paradoxically discover interesting elements on my interior and introspective thoughts and the emotions which could have crossed me and which people tell me in return and which I had not necessarily analyzed consciously.
Both are equally interesting to me.
"TRIBUTE TO SALVADOR DALÍ" Mixed media, acrylic, spray paint, pigments, gesso, ink and Posca on canvas - 100x80 cm - 2020
U: Have you ever had any doubt in becoming an artist, or during your career? If so, how did you overcome it?
T: Of course, I think that doubt is the artist's traveling companion ... just as much as loneliness. She, too, is so necessary, jubilant and an indispensable source of creation for me, although at times terribly painful and distressing. Everything goes hand in hand, like Yin and Yang interlocking and complementing each other perfectly.
From the first day I decided to launch myself overnight in this professional and exclusive life, I knew doubt ... And that's why I left myself no other option than to succeed in devoting my whole life to it and making a living from it.
The moments of doubt, the irregular incomes of the beginning, the disappointments, betrayals, and multiple worries were never enough to erase my happiness, my need, and my unshakeable will to paint this feeling of freedom which is worth all the gold in the world, and the fact that all the small or big victories are mine.
The feeling of leaving a trace that will survive us in the future is also a desire to survive death, in a way.
U: What is next for you?
T: We will see where the wind will take me ... I leave a lot of room for destiny, for human encounters. I consider this to be the spice of existence. Several beautiful exhibitions will be held soon in France and abroad, even if the health crisis has had a major impact on the culture and art sector, life is gradually resuming its rights …
At the moment I am exhibiting in Sicily in Catania at the Contea Caravaggio Museum and I am also still represented by the galleries Art Bunker Gallery, Galerie Arts Evasion, Hep Galerie, and Artefact Galerie in France.
I will also soon participate in an auction in London organized for the benefit of research against multiple sclerosis. And finally, I have an ongoing retrospective book project on my work from my early days in painting until today.
The Embassy of France in Gabon is also working on an artistic competition project on the theme of "Marianne" for young people in the country, using as a model my portrait of the allegory of the French Republic.
"THE INNER AWAKENING" Mixed media, acrylic, spray paint, pigments, gesso, ink and Posca on linen canvas - 61x46 cm - 2021
U: Is art a means of exploration or reflection? Or both?
T: I think we can say that it is exactly both at the same time! It depends on your point of view. For the artist, it is undeniable that it is above all a means of exploring himself in an introspective way. And of course, without thinking during the exploration process, it would remain very superficial and not yield anything deeply interesting, neither for him nor for others. For art lovers in the position of observers, art is more of an intellectual exploration, physically passive rather than active, which in no way prevents reflection and reverie, quite the contrary!
Art then becomes a revelation in many ways ... for the artist as well as for spectators and collectors. Thank you all for your reading and thank you Uzomah.
For more information about Thomas’s artwork please visit his site. Also please follow him on Instagram, Twitter and like him on Facebook.
