Marc Faivre: The Art of poetry drawn
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When I met Marc Faivre, designer-portraitist, I already know he’s in love Senegal and especially in St. Louis where he lived for 16 years. A common point that we cultivate along our trade. Man has this uncontrollable urge to go to the other, to discover in its universality, but also in its singularity. Curious and fine spirit, he speaks fluently in Wolof. And knows you start at the right time, a quote or a well Senegalese expression. Which is very pleasing, from a French. Esthete, he says he loves “the obvious beauty of faces met in St. Louis, appearance and fine lines,” which are expressed with unusual depth and sweetness. His words are chosen. Posed almost like one of the many paintings in which he gives life as a magician of the soul. Each face drawn, it is a bit of a new “performance, and the face is beautiful, it will be more difficult.”
He knows capture and transcribe chalk, marker or pastel, this moment, elusive to the common man, which makes the meetings out of time. It is sensitive to the legendary elegance of Saint-Louisiennes, it is equally seduced by the fine lines and the appearance of the men of the sea that came across in the morning. He likes to admire, then chew their weathered facies which says a lot about their work, their courage, their willingness and spirituality. His recognizable stroke of a pen is a tribute to all those renewed bright faces. This is the magic of this performance “that gives life” on paper to be drawn. Its almost initiatory journey to the land of Teranga, the keen jazz artist learned “another way to stand on the ground, another way of understanding life, a life energy that enriches.” Go to the other, through his art has certainly made it a double culture, strengthening internally in a city where animism, Christianity and Islam coexist peacefully. The painter took all the magnificence and universality.
