Jerome Romain

Jerome Romain

Jérôme Romain arguably is one of the best emerging painters in France. His realistic oil canvases on hand-built frames picture the human society in all its diversity and shades. "I suppose I paint people because that's the only subject that really interests me", the 43 year old artist says. "sometimes, I feel like I'm watching the world in a sociological way. People in action or in places tell us a lot about our society." His large-sized paintings resemble spontaneously taken photos but are so much more than a quick snapshot. Picturing instant scenes from everyday life, Jérôme reverses the action of taking random photos. Instead he preserves the scenes on canvas, granting them immortality in today's constantly changing world. "The aspect of painting, the representational modes, always changed during history", Jérôme explains. "Now people see so many pictures all the time. Every two minutes, we take more pictures than all of humanity in the 19th century. That's the way people see the world and that's why my paintings probably sometimes look like photographs. I do that to create a kind of proximity between my paintings and the others."