artist/ Étienne Mottez

France

Art has always been part of Étienne Mottez’s life. His dyslexia and dysorthographia thwarted his schooling, and he found in drawing an escape, a way to forge social links! Étienne’s troubled childhood, in which he struggled to find his place, left him with a fierce desire to exist. Strongly inspired by street culture, Lille-based artist Étienne Mottez discovered drawing through comics and graffiti. Since then, other artists such as Jean-Michel Basquiat, Hervé Di Rosa and Robert Combas have invaded his landscape. The sum of these

from the sum of these diverse influences is a shimmering, variegated painting that is surprising at first glance. But behind these vivid colors and intertwining graphics lies a story. True to his unusual career path, Étienne Mottez has never lost the habit of entrusting his canvases with the moments and feelings of his life. Whether happy or sad! And perhaps that’s where his difficulty in offering his work to the world comes from. It’s not always easy to let yourself be known…

Freed from any academic training, Étienne Mottez relishes the immense freedom he has to reveal his creative talent.Acrylic paint, oil paint, spray paint or Posca: the artist is limited only by his own desires. At ease with large formats, Étienne needs space to tell his story.Behind the visual aspect that hits the viewer head-on, can you spot the hobo signs and re-sew the anagrams present on the artist’s canvases?They are all messages to be decoded in order to reconstruct the story behind each work…