Vincent
Lajarige

Vincent Lajarige was born in Rouen in 1948. Since then drawing and painting have asserted themselves as an "absolute necessity". A doctor by training, Vincent Lajarige traveled the world with the Red Cross and Doctors of the World. These human encounters and his forays into the Amazon rainforest in the late 1980s led him to concentrate on trees in his artistic work.

In 2009, with botanist Francis Hallé, he created the association "Tropical Rainforests: the Film", dedicated to the realization of a film on these disappearing forests. This hope became reality when they met the film director Luc Jacquet. The film "Once Upon a Forest" was released in November 2013.

While filming onsite in Gabon in 2012, he met the painter Mark Alsterlind and, together with Francis Hallé, the adventure began!

"[...] The artist is a political being, constantly aware of the heart breaking, passionate, or delightful things that happen in the world, shaping himself completely in their image.”

Pablo Picasso – 1945

"I readily quote Picasso's sentence as this seems to me an essential point and the foundation of all creative processes.

My concern as a painter has been oriented for more than 20 years towards terrestrial, telluric and marine resonances.

Between origins and futures.

Over the last 10 years, this concern has found its expression in sculpture. Working with wood, the tree, the forest – these forgotten, destroyed, burned and worn out fibers – I try and depict a possible future.

Finding the memory of the wood and providing it with the hope of another life.

Trying to reveal what’s hidden in the wings, the reverse side of surfaces, the inside. Discerning the "soul" of the wood, its inner memory, rediscovering the forest and the mystery of things, recognizing their beauty. So as to stop destroying them."

Group exhibitions

2014 – 2015 – 2016 : “Trees” exhibition organized successively at the Upper church in Banon, the Chapelle de l’Observance in Draguignan, in Septèmes les Vallons, and at the Museum of Natural History in Rouen.

From 1982 to 2005, numerous group exhibitions were held in France and abroad.

Personal exhibitions

From 1983 to 2016, numerous solo exhibitions took place in Rouen, Le Havre, Paris, Fayence, Avignon, Chartres, Nîmes, Sarrebourg, Arles, as well as in Switzerland and Spain.