PIERRE RAPEAU

LE BOIS AUX CRÉATURES
24300 Abjat sur Bandiat, Périgord
 
PIERRE RAPEAU
(1935-2007 | FRANCE)

Pierre Rapeau, a biology  teacher, was born in the Perigord area of France. One day, tired of the world, he returned in the local forest, where he had a lively memory of the walks he made with his grandmother, collecting mushrooms and herbs.
 “In the early 1980s, I was suffering from silence. I was a biology teacher. I was tired and I divorced. I went to talk to the trees of my childhood. I stocked my world with my creatures, my mythology, distant echoes legends that my grandmother told me.” 
After the eighties, he decided to use “nature as his sketchbook”. So he got accustomed to leave in the early morning and go to the forest of his childhood, alone, to paint rocks and tree trunks, giving these natural items all kinds of expressions, eyes, faces. 
His days were linked by strange rituals: ad dawn he used his bicycle to reach the place, than he scanned the shadows, the bushes, the wet grass. When he discovered the piece caught the gnarled trunks of dead forms that secretly lying in rough strains, he took his colors and delicately tinged the trees. He emphasizes the roundness of a sensual mouth, the oval eye, a red nose of a unicorn, revealing nymphs and dryads asleep in folds tree. The result is surprising, mysterious.

Pierre Rapeau, insegnante di biologia, nacque nella zona francese di Perigord. Un giorno, stanco del mondo, decise di tornare nel bosco che, nei suoi ricordi, percorreva da giovane con sua nonna, raccogliendo funghi e piante particolari.“All’inizio degli anni ’80 soffrivo di solitudine. Ero un insegnante di biologia, stanco e divorziato. Ho cominciato a parlare con gli alberi della mia infanzia. Ho ingrandito il mio mondo di mie creature, mie mitologie, leggende che mi sono state tramandate da mia nonna“.
Dopo gli anni ottanta decise di utilizzare “la natura come un blocco da disegno”. Partiva presto al mattino per recarsi alla foresta, come faceva da bimbo, da solo, per dipingere pietre e legname, creando facce, espressioni, sguardi.
I suoi giorni erano caratterizzati da un vero e proprio rituale: giungeva al posto in bicicletta, all’alba, poi iniziava a controllare le ombre, i cespugli, l’erba bagnata. Quando scopriva le forme morte di un tronco aggrovigliato che segretamente si nascondeva, prendeva i colori ed iniziava a tingerlo e ad animarlo. Enfatizzava la rotondità di una bocca sensuale, un occhio particolarmente ovale, il naso rosso di un unicorno, rivelava ninfe e driadi dormienti sugli alberi. Il risultato è sorprendente e misterioso.


Image from the website of Yannick Rolandeau
Image from the website of Yannick Rolandeau
Image from the website of Yannick Rolandeau
Image from the website of Yannick Rolandeau
Image from the website of Yannick Rolandeau

Pierre Rapeau
le Bois aux Créatures
24300 Abjat sur Bandiat, Périgord, France
the part of the wood with the decorations and the forest is private property, but it is open to the public (ask locals)

Info from: arz.blogspirit.com and Outsider Environments