PAINTING THE ART OF ART 82 The sound of Bach’s fugues fills the studio. Fresh air wafts in through the wide-open doors. “When I paint, I am serene. I’m in the present moment, the joy of placing brushstrokes on the canvas. What’s important is not what you add, but what you remove. Working to simplify things.” A NEVER-ENDING QUEST “For me, this is just the start,” says the draughtsman and painter, who was born in 1950. A start that began in Rose-Hill in 1962 when his father, seeing him “always scribbling”, enrolled him in Serge Constantin’s studio. The radical artist was a demanding teacher. “He challenged us to be ourselves, to draw on resources from within ourselves.” This is why Constantin ripped up Jocelyn’s first drawing, a “copy of a Georges Braque work.” Then followed hours, days and years of painting still lifes, in particular skulls and then nudes to study volume. “We only drew with a drypoint HB pencil on newsprint. I learnt to use the pencil like a scalpel. I dug out grooves on the page.” He studied with the master once a week on Thursdays until 1975, and then went on to join Constantin’s Saturday Class (Groupe du Samedi), a breeding ground for a whole generation of Mauritian artists. “When I was 17 or 18, he said to me: ’Now, forget everything. Free yourself from the academic style.’ Once I had the experience, he told me to break the rules. My two mentors, Serge Constantin and the artist-poet Hervé Masson guided me on the road to freedom. Since then, I have carried on searching. I have some flashes of inspiration but never any certainty. Do we ever know if a painting is ’finished’? Mine are always in suspense. I am demanding and see myself as perfectly imperfect.” THE ESSENCE OF THINGS Alongside his career in banking, Jocelyn has never stopped painting. He picks up his brushes every day. “I believe less in inspiration than perspiration! Now I’m 74, I’m getting close but I’m not there yet. I still need to simplify nature’s landscapes.” Insatiably curious, he tries and tries again, always bearing in mind the lessons to be learnt from the masters of abstract expressionism. A great book lover, he has built up a fine collection of catalogues (Richard Diebenkorn, Robert Motherwell, Nicolas de Staël, among others) and he has stuck handwritten notes, quotes from people he admires, on his studio walls. Leonardo da Vinci: “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” Dalí: “Have no fear of perfection, you will never reach it.” And Arthur Rimbaud: “It has been recovered. What? – Eternity. It is the sea escaping with the sun.” And so the magical hour is here. From the terrace, the horizon quivers in the sea, veering to soft pink. Everything is about to begin again. “I BELIEVE LESS IN INSPIRATION THAN PERSPIRATION.” Sketch of a Nude, 2020, pencil. Croquis de nu, 2020, crayon.
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