Portraits of the artists

Benoit Peyrucq

Shortly after I qualified from the Ecole nationale supérieure des beaux-arts de Paris in 1986, I settled in the north of the Manche department, in the Lower Normandy region.
I work mainly in watercolours on a wide range of subjects and always from life or nature, subjects like country and seascapes, Mont Saint Michel, sport, music, and even the courtrooms.
Keen on Daumier, I began to work on legal subjects myself, then the press noticed my work.
I’ve been painting during trials for 11 years now: the Guy Georges trial, phone-tapping trials, Colonna, Fourniret ....
For the past 7 years I’ve been working with Agence France Presse, my drawings appearing in newspapers such as Libération, Le Figaro or for the TV channel Canal+.
Courtroom sketches require strong powers of observation.
Personally, I remain impartial. I try to capture what is happening at the trial as faithfully as possible. I concentrate on the characters, their expressions, their poses.
It is essential to work quickly and immediately.
I try not to miss anything: the position the hands, the look, the emotional state. Each trial is a challenge for me.

See Benoit Peyrucq’s blog at http://benoitpeyrucq.blogspot.com/ .

Listen to Benoït Peyrucq, artist - 02:32 [MP3 - 1.7 Méga octets]