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Biography:
Jean Claude Boutrouille was Born in Orleans, France where he attended High School in Lycee Pothier with Alain Corneau who went on to become a revered French movie director. JC then headed to the University at the Faculte de Pharmacie de Paris. When in Paris, he so often frequented the Cinematheque de la Rue D'Ulm that he saw over 300 movies a year with the likes of Bertrand Tavernier, Barbet Schroeder, BP Guiremand, Jean Serge Breton, and the poet Yves Martin. During this time, he got also a taste of the music of Luc Ferrari, one of his next door neighbor.
JC spent any vacation time at the Club Med, pursuing his other passions: diving and boating, sometimes with the former commando de marine, Bernard Lacosta. His trip through Central and South America was to be the first of many. Upon leaving university, the French army drafted JC as a sergeant instructor during the last two years of the Algerian War. The war ended just shortly before his scheduled deployment.
JC worked as a pharmacist throughout France in Orléans, Paris, Cannes, and Mougins. In the 1970's, he moved to Martinique (F.W.I.) and bought his first pharmacy in the city of Schoelcher and his successful pharmacy in Fort-de-France. While working in Martinique, JC met his wife Jacqueline, a practicing family physician, and became father to his only daughter Benedicte.
In 1991 at the end of the Mitterrand years, JC voted with his feet and moved with his family to the United States to Charleston, S.C. They became proud U.S. citizens in 1998. JC and his wife currently reside in Lighthouse Point, Florida where Jacqueline is a psychiatrist specializing in addiction. Their daughter Benedicte is an attorney. Their Florida lifestyle reflects an important pattern in their lives, always South and seaside! As best stated by Pierre Schoendorfer in Le Crabe Tambour, “A man is nothing without a boat...”
Artist's Statement
My style incorporates a medley of influences from various art forms. Here is a taste of what interests and inspires me...
I have always been a ravenous reader in both French and English, and I fill my bookshelves with the works of Updike, Bellow, Henry Miller, Nabokov, Sade, Proust, Celine, Queneau, Boris Vian, among many others.
Still a cinéphile, I go to the films of Lang, Minnelli, Preminger, Delmer Davis, Godard, and Truffaut, repeatedly.
Music always fills my house, whether it be classical (Richard Strauss, Berg, Martinu, Janacek, Debussy), Jazz (Coltrane, Mingus, Miles Davis, The Art Ensemble of Chicago, Albert Ayler, Eric Dolphy), or some other variety that I am exploring at the moment.
In recent years, I have become an avid cook and often take cooking lessons with Chef Jean-Pierre in Ft. Lauderdale. When in Paris, you can find me indulging in the French fine cuisine of my youth at Le Lyonnais and Chez Allard.
From an early age, I was fortunate enough to experience many of the world's finest art museums- El Prado, Centre Pompidou, Musée Picasso, MoMA. Just a handful of the artists that intrigue are Vermeer, Cezanne, Picasso, Matisse, Klee, Nicolas de Stael, Dubuffet, Balthus, William de Kooning, Edward Hopper, Tamayo, and Gerhard Ritcher. During the 1980's, I begin collecting art. My first acquisitions were paintings by Regis Dho, whom my wife and I met in Egypt on a cruise down the Nile River in 1983. Later, I discovered Guido Chire Balderrama in his atelier in La Paz, Bolivia. After that, I became interested in Matta, Aleshinsky, James Coignard, Jamali, Ronald Searle, Elmar Rojas, Brigitte Bussutil, Ginette Beaufrand, Lauro Salas, Ramon Miranda, Edwin Guillermo and other South American painters. Throughout my travels in South and Central America, I have always sought works by local artists.
Many years ago, I became a painter myself, self-taught no less. In the beginning, my influences were Nicolas de Stael and Jac Kephart, and I taught myself by mimicking their works. My first original works were predominantly abstract and included a few picasso-esque portraits. As I have progressed both artistically and technically, I have ventured to abstract landscapes reflected by my latest works. During an exhibition with several of my paintings at Marziart International Gallerie in Hamburg, Germany, critics told me that my strong palette is in the accordance with the German style. I consider myself to be an abstract expressionist whose love of the old style often comes out when I use Lefranc & Bourgeois' Flemish Siccative Medium to get a kind of "Vermeer" light or Ageing and Cracking varnish to create cracks.
I also have had the privilege to show my paintings at Exxor Gallerie in Boca Raton, a private show in Ft. Lauderdale and other venues throughout the South Florida area.
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