Painting has always fascinated me, but I couldn't understand how and why certain works could move me and others not.

I thought it was essentially due to the painter's drawing technique, the randomness of the colors and the perspective of certain canvases.

At Artquarium, I discovered a visual world based on precise rules invented and improved over the years by old masters and modern artists alike. Very precise rules of construction that can be applied to all languages of expression, even abstract ones, and that enhance the interest and success of the canvas. Properly applied, they make for intriguing, fascinating and moving canvases.

For a long time, I worked on my own and with teachers to improve my drawing technique, depicting faces and still lifes. My images were getting good, but something essential was missing, and I was frustrated and bored with my work.

I'd stagnate, I didn't know how to go on, so I'd add random strokes to "make more", sometimes they improved, sometimes they spoiled. I was working blindly.

Artquarium taught me that an image is a whole, and that each stroke responds to the next, guiding the eye across the canvas in a very precise way, as intended by the painter.

And as a spectator, we obey this language without realizing it. It's staggering.

The paintings that move me are all based on these construction rules of the past, even if they use very modern languages.

I now know that it's not enough to master tools and techniques, but that composition is also essential in a painting.

It's a whole.

It's a complex and excessively dense apprenticeship, but every step of the way is liberating: from blindness you begin to see. It's fascinating.

Gilbert's exercises are often boring, tedious and overly restrictive, but when we finally give in and do them, something clicks, because we integrate them. You can then apply them to your own paintings, and it's absolutely magical.

The frustration that remains is that each new discovery in learning opens my eyes to other rules and I realize that I would like to know everything right away and integrate everything to finally make my masterpiece ... perhaps at the threshold of my death ...!

Gilbert is extremely patient and encouraging, which makes you want to explore, work, read and understand. Dialogue is a very important part of the relationship with him. When we give up, he knows how to give us courage.

These techniques, forgotten in most art school curricula, should really be part of the curriculum. We could be overrun with masterpieces, that would be beautiful.

Thanks for opening my eyes!

Héloïse Spadone