Presentation

In 1972, I met the music of Elton John.
I instantly fell in love with this music. Which led me to paint a lot of things in relation to its author, between 1972 and 1976.

At the end of 1973, this work gave me the chance and the honour to meet Elton John (see chapter "Elton John > Background" on the Home page, or click here directly on Background). Some of my gouaches were used by the artist in the context of his 1974 American and British Tour. This work inspired by Elton John later gave me the impulse to create images around David Bowie’s persona, then after for the French singer-songwriter Véronique Sanson's Hollywood album's sleeve in a more specific way. The sum of these early works (and mainly, those devoted to the music of Elton John and his lyricist Bernie Taupin), logically opened my way for setting to painting a selection of the songs penned by the musician, composer, singer and painter Joni Mitchell, from the mid 1970s until the end of the Eighties. This latter body of research opened the doors of Painting to me.

Like the few portraits of David Bowie that I did later in the mid Seventies, many original gouaches dating from my adolescence in Nice and inspired by Elton John are missing today. I lost some myself. I had to delete a few others in the course of the last forty-something years, when their condition no longer allowed them to be preserved and kept. Some were reported missing after having been sent in 1974 and 1975 to the London Offices of The Rocket Record Company / John Reid Enterprises, located during the first mid 1970s on North Audley Street, then on South Audley Street. Same thing happened with a few other paintings that I had sent directly to the musician's Virginia Water "Hercules" home after my first meeting with him in 1973, and then later with some works sent to his Windsor "Woodside" mansion.

I do not know what happened to these originals.
I was contacted in early 2018 by a London art collector who wished to inquire about the availability of some of my "Elton John" works seen on my site of then (he mentioned in our exchange that he had once acquired the original painting of Captain Fantastic and The Brow Dirt CowBoy by Alan Aldridge, but some time later sold it away). My interlocutor assured me that in the course of the Eighties, the global stock of original artworks from all sources archived at The Rocket Record Company's business premises at 101 Wardour Street (the company’s address by then), to his knowledge had ended up loose in a dumpster, in the wake of a major "cleaning" caused by the business facilities' move to another location.

Either way, and whatever their fate may have been, these first works inspired by Elton John and his music are of a special importance to my heart. They are my foundations' first stones, and without these, the house as it exists would not be such as it is. Or presumably, it would have built up quite differently. My work related to Elton John somehow decided of my future, and I therefore have a special affection for it, on the one hand because of the often extraordinary circumstances which made it happen and blossom, but also because it was born from that period of life permanently over and far behind, which is simply known as youth - a moment as much wonderful as it is fleeting ; a moment when anything is possible.

And indeed, everything was. As shown by my story with Elton John and the work related to his music.

Gallery
Paintings > 1972 - 1976 / 2004

Gallery
Photography > 1977