STEPHANE JOANNES

Stéphane Joannes’ large oil on canvas paintings depict solitary huge cargo ships surrounded by the vast sky and water. Featuring  large horizontal paintings of cargo ships that border on abstraction. His traditional subjects are made contemporary by Joannes’ clean lines, bold delineations of space and hints of abstraction.

Joannes’ paintings are typically long, horizontal pieces, sometimes diptychs or triptychs over eight feet long. He breaks his paintings up into three distinct sections: the sea, the sky and the sea vessel on the horizon. The air and water seem vast and are often blocked off with a single, bold color. His ships, on the other hand, are incredibly detailed with each drip of rust and weathering carefully articulated. These orange and brown drops reveal not only the ship’s past but also the painting’s history– they are visible evidence of the painter’s brushstrokes and artistic process. The busy, overlapping vertical streaks provide an interesting contrast to the otherwise clean, precise lines the artist uses.

On the painter, Nicolas Brizault writes: Joannes’ relish for the subject matter emerges in all its fullness. The eye takes in the rusty iron sheeting, the cavities, the bumps, the smooth and frayed surface. It views the rusty ruggedness of these metal monsters. That is the magic and the essence of Joannes’ work: the sparseness of the subject matter allows it to create itself, heavy and incorporeal at the same time. The beholder is no longer certain of his presence. He examines—indeed, enters—something that is no longer a canvas. He is fascinated. The sudden stillness reaches him also and sets him on the wharf.

Born in 1975 in Besançon, France, the painter studied at L'Ecole Superieure des Arts Decoratifs in Strasbourg, France. Joannes’ first exhibition in 1997 was mainly black and white figurative paintings of nudes. However, after a visit to Le Havre, a waterfront town in France, the artist became fascinated by the large sea ships he saw there. He is now most known for his work on this subject.