When she realized that I had finished (which came quickly, as I had no intention of intruding beyond the one small minute that it took me for expressing myself, not wishing to annoy her or disturb her meal furtherly), she simply said "thank you" in her inimitable tone (a guaranteed thrill to my shorthairs, no question!... what a voice!), then lowering her head and looking away back to her guest, she resumed her conversation with him without waiting for me to leave. I thus tiptoed out quickly.
This is how my only meeting with Patti Smith ever happened.

At the beginning of our research at the dusk of 2014, a second small miracle happened by luck, settling the question of the location : the Espace Niemeyer which had welcomed me on so many previous occasions in the past years, and which I had questioned just for the sake of trying my luck, answered positively in the person of its administrator Gérard Fournier. Gérard informed us of the Espace’s interest in our project and in the work of Véronique Durruty that our project’s introduction folder presented. We were delighted : Espace Niemeyer’s conditions were affordable in terms of exhibition costs (which was a gesture that we unquestionnably owed to its administrator), and also because we knew that the location’s size and notoriety were ideal for the event we had in mind -and a quite good omen for the future.

But the clouds rapidly gathered in our sky. Not in that of the artistic creation as such, because from the beginning our enthusiasm and our ideas fueled up Véronique in her photographies' sessions, and me in my paintings’ making. But the exhibition's preparation turned out to be more difficult than expected. On a personal level, horsesvisions represented for me a repeated and aggravated dive into all the unmanageable issues that I had dealt with the Trois Traces d'Oscar production in 2006. With the difference that by then, I had benefited from Oscar Niemeyer's benevolence in relation to the concerned project.