Nicolas Galtier, french painter, shares his time between France and Italy, his bosom country, where he visits cultural places, museums and churches, mainly in Rome, his favourite city. He also supplies himself there with high quality linen canvases, the future supports for his paintings.
The artist has a predilection for large-sized paintings, thus reconnecting with the mural scale tradition of ancient frescoes or the Italian Renaissance. These abstract works are characterized by a play of textures which gives them movement and depth. The rendering of light in painting is also essential to Nicolas Galtier. This vibrancy at the heart of the canvas is obtained thanks to the superimposition of successive layers and to the use of a mixed technique, the artist using gold, silver, brass or copper leaves which illuminate his canvases at the same time as they magnify them, like Byzantine religious icons.
Like an invitation to meditative quietness of mind, far from the hustle and bustle of the contemporary world, his art is like an open window on another world, a reflection on time, a kind of inner journey where sensations emerge through contemplation. The occasional use of oxides, for example, marks the canvas with a distant echo, like a reminiscence. The trace of time is also perceptible through fading patterns, as if erased, which are visible on certain paintings. Inspired by decorative arts, Venetian fabrics or antique frescoes, they testify to a personal style that pays homage to the history of Italian art while updating it. Like the imprint of a lost paradise of Western art.
