Romain Saintonge was born in 1979. He lives and works in Evian. 

 

In his art, each painting is the result of a long process, almost a quest, a journey backwards, a return to the sources. On his canvas, a character appears, providing an emotion comparable to the one we feel in front of old photographs, when we suddenly realize that they show beings whose name nobody can remember anymore, who have disappeared for a long time. 

 

The painting is a vector of remembrance, a passage between two worlds, a poorly defined grey area, and a no-man's land in which the memory wanders, in a search for ghosts of the past. His paintings express spontaneity, improvisation, and some kind of controlled randomness, it is a painting of the instinct and of the moment, giving free rein to the imagination and interpretation. 

 

The artist draws the richness of his material from his experience and his flaws and creates an interaction between the subject and the texture. Scratches, cracks, overlays… they show his timeless characters, in a play with the aging of the surface and the alterations brought by the passing of time. These characters, appearing to be destroyed by time and fallen into oblivion, invite us to look at the image for a moment and everything else seems to stay still. 

 

Romain Saintonge was on the cover of the 30th issue of the "Mirroir de l’Art” magazine, and was listed in 2012, by the same magazine, between today’s 100 best artists.