Double-sided. With colors, Jimmy Frédéric is capable of both a rendering “old school”. Just like psychedelic atmospheres, freed from codes, from constraints. So that sensations prevail, the vertigo of freedom to express oneself. Freedom conquered at the age of 70.
It is this striking duality that Jimmy Frédéric is exhibiting at the Musée de la Photographie, rue du Vieux Conseil, in Port-Louis. The works grouped under the title 70 Berges will be on display until Friday, September 13.
Retracing his pictorial journey, Jimmy Frédéric explains: “At first, I was doing figurative things, old school even. But sometimes I allow myself to change things.” Grandson and son of an artist, Jimmy Frédéric is the first in the family to show his works outside the walls of the house. “They did watercolors, still lifes.” But the fruit baskets “old game”he doesn’t like it. He much prefers “light, open air”.
Jimmy Frédéric claims to have frequented the Saturday group with Roger Charoux for some time. But a bereavement put an end to his weekly outings. “I didn’t paint for years. When I started again, I painted dark pictures. They are at home, I don’t exhibit them.” Now that he has “started to blossom again”the effect is directly visible on the canvas, notes the artist. The proof is the painting entitled Hope. Its counterpart, Despair, painted during the Covid-19 pandemic, is not included in the exhibition, safely tucked away in his personal collection.
“In middle school, I was good at drawing, I wanted to study art. But my parents said that I should opt for science, because it had a better future.” When Jimmy Frédéric is asked if he is a frustrated artist, he just laughs. Before telling us that he moved to Australia in 1982, where he had a long career as a computer scientist. “Now I have returned to live in Mauritius, but I still have one foot in Australia.” In Mauritius, he goes back and forth between the house in Albion and the “camp” in Tombeau Bay.
Let us focus on its symmetries. The colonnades of the Bank of Mauritius that he renders as aligned with the royal palms of the Place d’Armes. A lighthouse that leans on the opposite side of the tree that is at the other end of the painting. “I respect the vanishing lines, the perspective, the proportions. I’m always a little blocked by that.”he confides.
Which is categorically denied by all the works he calls his paintings. “unusual”. “It’s not abstract, it’s modern. I tend more towards impressionism.” With its complementary mauves and oranges that recur in several paintings. A deep blue for an Australian fisherman’s house that recalls a local Creole hut.
The rendering is totally different from the landscapes. The artist sucks us into a shimmering Vortex. Invites us into the shade of an Australian Rainbow eucalyptus. “I amplified the colors.” In Mauritius, Jimmy Frédéric had only exhibited in a group until then. At the age of 70, he is exhibiting 28 works solo for the first time on his native island.
