Philippe Charles Jacquet

Echouage, oil paint on board

2015

Philippe Charles Jacquet is not simply a painter of landscapes; he is a creator. Jacquet has mastered the ability to combine what is real and what is imagined. As a result, his compositions, heavily inspired by Brittany coasts and estuaries, have an element of the sublime and register deeply with the subconscious. Although he paints sparse landscapes, there is something fundamentally pleasing in the surreal, idealized quality of his work. Jacquet is an architectural painter; he plans his landscapes and their built environments with measured precision, constructing them in a layered variety of media and methods until they are as real as they are imagined. The materiality finessed, from mirror-like water to rust-scored wood grain, brings his painted compositions to life. The combination of textures, geometric accuracy and concise colors creates esotericism that includes viewers rather than excludes them. Jacquet’s solitary structures do not reject but envelop the viewer with the familiarity of a feeling.