Michel Moreau

Typically, when traveling on business, I have very little chance of seeing something, even when I go abroad. In the evening I put away papers used during the day, I prepare papers for the next day or I am simply so tired that I go to bed early. Sometimes, however, I happen to have some spare minute and I go to the restaurant for dinner, so that I have at least a little walk.

Just this once there was no need for a walk too, anyway, because I found a pleasant surprise in the same hotel I stayed, the Hotel Diana in Vence, not far from the IBM Business Solution Center in La Gaude. Inside the hotel, in fact, there was a personal exhibition by a local artist, a certain Michel Moreau. I must say I was impressed by his paintings, so full of life and color, with broad brush and curved strokes as oil should always be, rich in detail without being kitsch or baroque, with a style somewhere between the Impressionism and Van Gogh.

Landscapes, beautiful women, still lifes … there was everything. Later on I found out in the web that he is a well-known artist, with exhibitions and personal expo all around the world. To me, I simply loved it. I think it’s nice to occasionally take a break and let another world intrude into the everyday routine of my work, though my job is interesting: a creative world, made up of sounds or colors, music or pictures on the road or within a hotel or a restaurant; a world that is another planet, where the logic and timing are different and life has a different taste and flavor, that smells of sea or street, pine or cooking; a world that reminds me how diverse our planet is and how all my problems do not even exist elsewhere.

I caught two or three shots of this world with my mobile phone and – I forgive the author – images are what they are and do no justice to his pictures, but I absolutely wanted to share them with you. I hope you enjoy these paintings as I did.