Interview with Thomas Petit

What message(s) do you want to express through your work? To tell the truth, I don’t try to convey any message. I don’t know why I start working on this or that series of painting. I try not to ask myself too many questions. On the other hand, I am always interested in knowing what people feel when they see my paintings, what they evoke to them. It sometimes gives me some points of view on my work for which I had no idea. Which artists inspire you? Who are your masters? All of them, it seems! Everything I see touches me, more or less unconsciously by the way. I could probably name a few artists who influence me in particular, but I know from experience that we are talking here of unsettled elements in time… Thus, today, it would be Klimt, Betty Tompkins, Basquiat, Kendell Geers, and a fascination for Marcel Deschamps… But I would surely name others in three months! What have you gained by being on the internet? To be on the internet increases tenfold the possibilities to be seen, multiply the contacts between artists, allows the confrontations with other areas… Did the internet enable you to meet new models, to find new exhibit places? Let’s say that this is on the internet that I find the pictures I use as models! And for the exhibition places, I am already searching for the next place where I will hang up my work. Has your work ever been censored? If so, how did you deal with it? Actually, my last series has been censored some times, this is a possibility we have to expect when the subject is explicit. Yet, it sometimes annoys me on the moment. Then I don’t care anymore, it does not keep me from painting! What projects mean a lot to you at the moment? To go on this ongoing series and to exhibit it soon. Also, I would like to carry on what I do in video with my accomplice Guillaume Montier, and which theme is very different from what is approached in that series. Could you tell us a few words about the place you live/work in? I live and work in Rouen, Haute-Normandie, France. The contemporary art scene is not very active in this city, but it is up to us, artists, to change that. It rains often, the weather is grey, the wind frequent, but I love it… Words gathered in December 2008 © Incubus' Choice