Incubus’ Choice: Close-up on Michel Debray & Clovis Trouille

What message(s) do you want to express through your work?

The beauty of women and of their sex, and particularly in its more carnal, biological and endocrinal aspect. Like Clovis Trouille, I can’t bear the warping exercised by Cubism or by some expressionism on the image of the female body. I aslo like to show the pleasure of the woman who gives herself in a spasm that can be seemed painful. Woman’s sex, that “origin of the world” according to Courbet, refers obviously to the mystery of life and, consequently, to death.

Which artists inspire you?, who are your masters?

I dislike modern and conceptual art. An Annunciation by an Italian primitive (Fra Angelico, Martini) moves me more than a Jackson Pollock. Vermeer is a genius, as well as Rembrandt. Things go wrong with impressionism… I would like to achieve the excruciating perfection of Egon Schiele for example. I have with Clovis Trouille an obvious kinship of Picardy inhabitant. I share with him antimilitarism and libertarian spirit.

What have you gained by being on the internet?

To be seen, quite simply. You rent - and expensively - a gallery in an average city or even in Paris and your paintings are seen by 5 persons a day in average. On the internet, your paintings are seen by thousnads of people. In short, one is completely master of one’s work. That’s why I have subtitled my web site: “To end it with publishers and galleries’ owners” who are crooks.

Did the internet enable you to meet new models, to find new exhibit places?

I met in one year more buyers than in 30 years of irregular exhibitions in more or less random places: secularized chapel in the Limousin, gallery on the street “des Blancs-Manteaux” (Paris), festival of eroticism…

Could you tell us a few words about the place you live/work in?

I live in Ault, near the Channel, in Picardy (France), very close to the Somme bay, in front of a grandiose landscape. However, my spouse’s ass moves me much more.

Close-up on…