Manuel
Dampeyroux

Currently residing in Montpellier, I practice drawing and painting in a singular way. My personal art
production begins at about the age of five. My first major artistic influence was the discovery at
the age of fourteen of the cinema of the new Hollywood. The viewing of these films was an
important aesthetic shock because their work was thematic complex, formally innovative, morally
ambiguous, and rich in mythical resonance.

The new Hollywood has seen the birth of some of the greatest directors and works in the history of
cinema where immorality and extreme violence, previously censored by the Hays code, mingle in
twilight and desperate stories. Ambiguity, the realistic vision of individuals and their problems, the
willingness to explore the depths of the human soul and the use of anti-heroes are themes that
stand out in my pictorial work.

Graduate of a Master in Contemporary Plastic Practices at the University Paul Valéry III of
Montpellier, I also give courses in academic drawing at a private higher institution of interior
architecture and disgn in Montpellier (ESDAC), oil painting courses for the Atelier de Mo located in
the fine arts district of Montpellier as well as for the Association Arts et Culture (Le Crès, France). I
also organize oil painting workshops where we talk about "painting the light".

My personal artistic practice is natural, almost daily. Artistic creation is for me a strong conviction,
a passion. For a few years, I also practice photography and video. My major pictorial influences are
the following painters: Jan Van Eyck, Edvard Munch, Vilhelm Hammershoi, Edouard Manet,
Vermeer, Rembrandt, Caravaggio & Francis Bacon. I am also a reader of poems, especially the
poetry of the second half of the 19th century (Rimbaud-Baudelaire-Verlaine-Sully Prudhomme).