About the artist:

When Jean-Marie Picard talks about drawing, he's talking about his scales. The preparatory sketches are countless to fit these large sheets of paper he cherishes. 160 centimeters by one meter twenty of virgin pallor on which the lead pencil first and then the charcoal are deposited in bursts, from reserves to gray mounts so that the light can be. It's not the subject that imposes violent and dark contrasts, this struggle between black and white, it's the way a wood engraver draws with force. And the artist approaches the subjects without compromise with the harshness of an Egon Schiele, so direct. There is no absolute necessity for realism, the line being guided more by a sort of inner anger than by the wisdom of a retinal reproduction. Jean Marie Picard is not lying. He also observes that we live in a so-called evolved, prophylactic, technological, communicative society, but that we always hold the club, ready for the most unheard-of violence. He is also working on another series of drawings inspired by Flaubert's three tales, including the Legend of Saint John the Hospitaller: One day, with a ferocious heart, you will murder your parents... To calm down and not let the brambles of rage grow in the face of injustice and cruelty, there is also time to look at the engravings of the old masters, such as Holbein, Ugo da Carpiou, the Master of Playing Cards...