j.harms.contact@gmail.com

I remember a horse I drew on a black board as my first work of art.

I was 7 or 8 years old.

I remember my first art classes on Wednesday afternoons at M. Alfort. A retired amateur watercolorist, who lived in my village. He taught me how to use watercolors using old postcards of France.

I was 10 years old.

It was while working in Nagasaki, Japan, in 2009 that I finally found my artistic language.

There, I rented a small space above a Café / Art Studio called the Indies Art Club XXX. After long days at work, and providing I wasn’t too tired, I would crawl up the ladder like stairs at the back, and paint the neighborhood.

It was during one of those late night sessions that I painted O’kunchi, my very first true work of art. The painting depicts the traditional festival as seen from my balcony.

I understood later on the reasons of such an artistic epiphany.

In Japan, without the need to focus on the language and the sounds, and the conversations, my whole attention was drawn to lines and colors. I could see better because I couldn’t speak or read. Certain bouquets of lines and colors started making sense. Like a poem in colors that sounds right.

Since then, on each of my outings, I seek the bouquets of lines and colors that resonates so well with me.

I speak both French and English, and grew up in both cultures. That is why my paintings sometimes are titled in one or the other language.

The titles spring up in my mind while I am working on the painting itself. They sometimes have a double meaning. sometimes they have nothing to do with the painting itself it seems. But all are chosen very carefully.

The training years (1995-2004)

Pastel summer courses at the University of Boulder Colorado (School of fine arts). Metal work with a French master craftsman (compagnon chaudronnier), with whom I designed and created several metal sculptures out of zinc and copper. Art classes on still life with French equestrian artist Christian Lernould. Oil painting with French artist Hélène de Jessé. A professional training course in decorative painting in the South of France.

The professional years
(2005 and ongoing)

Decorative painting with fellow French artist Christophe Martin, in and around Paris. Redecorating Staircases, hotel lounges, restaurants as well as Parisian appartments and private homes. Completing grand scale murals and ceilings for the Hôtel de Crillion in Paris and the restaurant “Le Jules Verne” on the second floor of the Eiffel tower, among other things.

Artistic forays (2006 and ongoing)

Inspired by past-century “polioramas”, I have created several multicombination sceneries called “polypanoramas”. Linoprinting. Humoristic drawings about a hotel dog. Flower painting. Creating a 6th continent (365 postcard size drawings of an imaginary world.)

Collaborations

(2021) Collaboration with Michel Bohbot, art historian and contemporary art expert, leading to the creation of booklets mixing art and poetry and epistolary art .