JEAN PAUL PAGNON

                                                             

J-Paul est un peintre-plasticien figuratif néo-cubiste spécialisé dans les portraits de célèbres jazzmen et bluesmen, et aussi de musiciens et scènes issus de son imagination.

Il a réalisé des portraits de grands artistes du Jazz et du Blues, tels que Django Reinhardt, Billie Holiday, B.B. King, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Ray Charles, Wes Mongomery, Charlie Christian, Lighnin' Hopkins, Muddy Waters, T.Bone Walker, Nat King Cole, john Fogerty, Kellylee Evans, Claude Nougaro, Joséphine Baker, Eric Bibb, Romane Manetti, Nico Wayne Toussaint et beaucoup d'autres.  

Les peintures de J-Paul Pagnon sont exposées régulièrement à la légendaire Chope des Puces de Saint-Ouen, dans les clubs de Jazz parisiens tels que Le Jazz Café Montparnasse, Le Sunset-Sunside, Le Baiser Salé, les festivals tels que le Festival Django Reinhardt de Samois, Cahors Blues Festival, Jazz au Confluent, Le Festival Rock'n'roll de Disney Village.

Jean-Paul Pagnon vit à Paris et expose régulièrement ses peintures sur le Marché de La Création Paris-Montparnasse.

Ses oeuvres figurent dans de nombreuses collections (France, Etats-Unis, Canada,  Pays-Bas, Suisse, Luxembourg,  Allemagne,  Norvège,  Autriche, Hongrie,  Angleterre,  Irlande,  Espagne).            

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Seeing and hearing

To see this faces and hear the music that enlightens them.

Born in the cotton fields long ago, it is this roving warm complain still rising to us. Jean-Paul Pagnon is painting this music. Do not look for well-known faces ! They are the soul of blues and jazz. The same music flows in their blood. Eternity is their common link.

Can you imagine the mind of a mutifaceted Billie Holiday behind the détail of  Hula Girl ’s face or  Celia  ?

Haunting, obsessing Billie Holiday overwhelming Jean-Paul Pagnon to such a point that he untiringly summons her to appear in all his feminine portraits. « This voice,  he confesses, I’ll never get over it ».

Whith his long pale hands, Jean-Paul Pagnon paints black skins with an almost green glint, life-seamed faces, he says…

His world puts together green-gowned singers, chromium-plated microphones, saxophones and guitars. Standing in the foreground, they all appears as principal characters.

His paintings are as warm as a steaming coffee cup, as sweet as a hot chocolate, recalling the curling smoke  of a cigar from Havana and the sweaty summer in Louisiana...

It emanates from them the America of old days, far from us, in a ideal and fantasy world, this America printed on advertisements with its smooth outdated colors. A ghost-like America… Has it ever existed ?

Jean-Paul Pagnon gives colours to this unqueched dream, takes the hand of the unlooker we become at the sight of this american mirage, and he plays with his pictures its everlasting sound track, that of Jazz and Blues myth. 

                                              Marie-Albane Laugier

J-Paul Pagnon's paintings are in many collections in France, USA, Holland, Swiss, Luxembourg and Austria.