Dominique Labauvie was instrumental in introducing me to the forests of Alsace, his native region. I love walking through nature, feeling the air, observing the changing light, and experiencing the ways a landscape shapes perception. Materiality has always been visually seductive to me. Nature offers an inexhaustible vocabulary of surfaces.

I fell in love with Schauinsland in the Black Forest near Freiburg-im-Breisgau, Germany. The north-facing mountains and wind-filled winters create a choreography of movement within the trees. At times they seemed to dance, inviting us to join them. I have always been sensitive to our place within the natural world. In this landscape, the myths and atmosphere of the Wagnerian universe felt vividly present.

I grew up by the ocean and was deeply attached to marine life. As a child I dreamed of mermaids and submerged cities, becoming a powerful swimmer in hopes of discovering them. Encountering forests and mountains expanded that sense of wonder and transformed my image-making.

While living in Paris, I worked as an assistant to a painter who provided me with a generous studio. I have always had a love affair with paper. One evening I discovered a discarded stack of exquisite ten-ply cardboard used to protect large glass windows during construction. I gathered as much as I could carry and brought it back to the studio. The layered structure of the material and its potential for transformation immediately energized my thinking.

I had already experimented with small cardboard constructions, but now I wanted to work on a larger scale in order to recreate the sensations I experienced in the forest: the movement of wind, the complexity of surface, and the physical energy of the landscape. I built large forms in clay and soaked the cardboard in water so the layers would separate and become malleable. Using glue, pastel, charcoal, ink, paint, and graphite, I constructed reliefs that existed somewhere between drawing, sculpture, and landscape.

When the work reflected the intensity with which it had been made, I knew it was complete.

I have worked as a Master Printer since 1984. In 1989, when I became Director of the Ateliers of Galerie Maeght in Paris, the condition set forth by the Maeght family was that I relinquish my identity as an exhibiting artist. At the time, I had recently presented two successful exhibitions, with works entering the collections of the French State, the private collection of Alain Gutharc, and the Morandi Collection in Freiburg-im-Breisgau. I chose the print studio and devoted myself fully to the collaborative practice that would eventually become Bleu Acier.

The works presented here span the years 1985 to 2026. After decades devoted primarily to collaboration, publishing, and teaching, recent interest in these works has encouraged me to revisit them, re-engage with earlier ideas, and begin planning new bodies of work. Their inclusion here is not a return to a former practice, but the continuation of one that never entirely disappeared.