- artist - architect - urban sketcher -

Art is not an end in itself. It is an engine of life, a catalyst of emotions and a wonderful means of expression. Alain Rouschmeyer's message is clear. These paintings are slices of life, gourmet approaches to everyday life that he manages to “crunch” with relish.

The artist constructs the story of his life through the prism of his encounters, travels and emotions. He writes down his moods on the canvas like a visual diary. Painting traps a real or fantasized moment, it is a wonderful trick of death, a trick of oblivion. Alain Rouschmeyer lets himself be carried away by his keen gaze and navigates the flow of his memories. The mechanics of memory attaches itself to places to sustainably inscribe a moment experienced. The artist composes in a similar way. Space is treated with the same force as humans. More than a simple setting, it is an emotional landscape. We experience the place at the same time as the characters represented. The experience is not just visual, we feel the atmosphere, perceive the scents and the murmurs that seem to escape from the work. The flow of time stops and we are spectators of a passage, of a moment which escapes us and which the artist manages to retain in his canvas.

Genre scenes, life scenes, landscapes, nudes, the artist does not close any doors. Technical mastery, the rendering of materials, the precision of gesture and the search for an aesthetic of bodies, shapes and colors is at the heart of his artistic approach. Rigor and sharp perception are abilities developed in particular by his initial training as an architect. His sensitivity to drawing is a fundamental aspect of his art. The quality of the line is remarkable, it is part of the signature of the painter/architect. The sketch becomes almost automatic writing. It is a starting point, a home port which allows one to unfold his story on the canvas. The artist summons his memories, his experience of places, landscapes, bodies... Architecture naturally takes a special place in his works. It must be interpreted as a living space, a playground, a dotted human presence.

The artist's talent is also expressed by his ability to tell us a story and take us with him into his intimacy . The choice of the figurative is not trivial, it offers us reassuring benchmarks, paths of identification so rarely taken by current contemporary creation and its cult of abstraction. The artist lays the foundations, he builds a decor, an atmosphere and lets us imagine what happens next. Objects take on a new dimension under his features. They become contemporary totems. An empty chair, a pair of shoes are enough to materialize the ghostly presence of a man and a woman who we could almost hear behind the canvas. Everyday music infiltrates the compositions like a sometimes nostalgic, sensual, catchy chant. A female model regularly appears in his paintings. Is this a muse? of a vestal guardian of the artist's inner fire? Alain Rouschmeyer paints with the hands of the creator, the gaze of the poet and the heart punctuated by the beauty that surrounds us. He explores and reinterprets classic subjects of art such as the representation of the bather so dear to the Impressionists or the chair, a flagship object of the avant-gardes. Nothing is left to chance in his paintings. The apparent spontaneity of the composition is the result of meticulous work of observation and aesthetic research.

The artist touches us with his sensitivity and his poetic approach to the world around him. His painting is generous, deeply nourished. His art is an invitation to embrace the day.

Andréas Alberti - Author, art critic, specialist journalist - June 2022