Paul Fauris

Paul is 25 years old and is currently an intern in the litigation department of Latham & Watkins LLP, Paris office. When asked about his relationship with art, Paul explains: "I have not always liked painting. I would rather say I have only recently become fond of it. I have been painting for four years now. I came to painting as one often comes to reading or to listening to music. I came to it as one comes to take a deep breath in an empty field; as one comes to wander. I was like the one who comes to seek the friendship of isolation. I only paint in the evenings. The stars soothe me – they always have a special place in what I paint.

 

I don't know what I paint. I paint what I have come across, what I am attracted to, but also, maybe, what I do not want to see anymore. I realize that there is always something good as there is always something bad. As it is in life, both live together. My paintings are the result of overlay. There is what we see, and then what we do not see. What we don't want to see. But it is all the same. I notice that some items always remain in the foreground: love, of course. Poetry. Light, too – e.g., the fire, the candle. Because if everything should disappear, love, poetry and light are, I am sure of it, what would stay forever.

 

In the end, what I paint is my story. My life. I even think that it is "Life" in itself that I paint, and that everyone can find their way around my paintings. In the end, each of our paths are, I believe, not so different. What surrounds us, what we live, must be decrypted. But it is not the world that is unreadable, it is us. So I try, through painting, to illuminate a little more in ourselves, always keeping in mind this citation: 'in the darkness, even the clearest writing becomes illegible'."