Louis POULAIN Hommage au Facteur Cheval
Louis POULAIN 1964
Louis Poulain was born in 1964 in Courcelles-lès-Lens. He has lived and worked in the Centre de la Pommeraie (Belgium) since 1984. Inspired by current events, magazines and advertisements, this artist works mainly on the theme of architecture. Each painting can take several weeks to complete. With a very precise gesture, he first draws a rough plan with a grey pencil. His houses have the particularity of being superimposed, and his multi-faceted characters and colourful birds give life to the drawing. The artist deals with various themes, such as the strike, the market, the fair or the war.
These works are kept by the Paul Duhem Foundation (Belgium).
Hommage au Facteur Cheval 2013
His work Hommage au Facteur Cheval is a painting on cardboard. It is signed and dated. A single reading is not enough to analyse the whole composition, because although the blue sky is immaculate, the architecture remains anarchic. The back of the Egyptian temple on the north façade, the perched bird and the multitude of bestiary decorations typical of facteur Cheval can be seen. The multicoloured building accentuates the marvellous aspect of the naive creation. Six birds, typical of Louis Poulain’s style, adorn the structure, and two figures, with intertwined bodies, visit the monumental work. In the foreground, the postman Cheval carries his stones. Although in profile, two eyes stare at the viewer. As a symbol of the slow pace of construction, his wheelbarrow looks like a tortoise. Louis Poulain’s composition contains the same texts that were engraved on the original building: “DUN-SONGE-J’AI-SORTI-LA-REINE-DU-MONDE”, “FACADE NORD” and “TRAVAIL D’UN SEUL HOMME”. Above this architectural comedy, Louis Poulain also wrote “TOUT-CE-QUAT-TU-VOIS PASSANT EST-L’OEUVRE D’UN-PAYSAN”, paying tribute to the rural origins of the postman, whose parents were small farmers. For Louis Poulain, this work is also a way of promoting unconventional, amateur and naive art, which echoes his work.