Preface To The Book By VIRGINIE LUC

 Mendrisse, Like A Watchman Awaits The Dawn…

Like A Watchman Waiting For The Dawn, Jean-Louis Mendrisse, For More Than Forty Years, Has Been Watching, In The Background Of The Paintings, For The Arrival Of Enigmatic Figures.

They Were Born A Long Time Ago.

Same As A Child Dazzled By The Spectacle Of The World, The Young Boy Spends Long Hours In The Workshop Of His Father, The Sculptor Jean Mosnier, Who, Throughout His Life, Shaped Sculptures. Fragments Of Bodies In Immense Blocks Of White Marble Or Black Volvic, Up To Transforming Lava Stone Into Glistening, Almost Oozing Silk. Under The Blows Of The Chisel Which Hammer The Faces Of A Madonna And The Hands Of A Saint With Such Beauty. Frightening, The Creative Gesture Is Also Transmitted. À In Turn, Like The Air He Breathes, Freely, Without Remonstrance Or Advice, Jean-Louis Seeks The Goddesses In The Clay He Models And In His First Sketches.

He Would Have Wanted To Create A World That Belonged Only To Him. Only Him. However, Man Preserves The Memory Of The Child Inhabited By By The People Of Stones Who Still Walk Forward; His Meeting. And, Tirelessly, The Painter Applies Himself To His Work. Transmute The Shadow Of The Father Into Light, Reinventing Since Childhood The Divinities He Made His Own In The Flat Areas Of Acute Colors – Blood Purple, Celestial Yellow, Royal Blue – And The Subtle Transparencies Of The Glazes.

At The End Of A Dead End, Place De La Bastille In Paris. Paris, A Workshop In Paris Sheltered From Passers-by. This Is Where It Is. That, Every Day, The Capricious Muses Invite The Painter. À Discover Them First. One Sketch Then Another, Each Thrown Onto Separate Tracing Sheets. He Assembles And Scrambles The Little Transparent Papers, Juxtaposes Them, Reverses Them, Superimposes Them, Adjusts Them Again, So That Soon, By Chance, He Will Find “the One” Scene, The Architecture Of The Painting Come.

Then, The Time To Develop The Canvas Can Begin. Face To Face Its Chassis, The Combat – Dancing Sometimes -  Can Get Involved. Forms Emerge, First At First Glance. Acrylic To Lay The Foundations, Structure The Whole, Fill The Void. Once The Space Is "posed", The Elements Are Sifted Through The Paint To The Paint. Oil. The Hours Become Slower, More Meticulous, More Concentrated. The Error Would Be Fatal. The Colors "rise", The Raspberry Velvet Drapes Dress The Immaculate Bodies, The Shadows Deepen The Edges Of The Emaciated Faces, The Gaze Sharpens In The Dark, The Whites Enhance The Souls Hence; Sometimes Ribbons Of Dreams And Sand Escape, Perspectives Waver, The Horizon Trembles.

In The Background Of The Painting, Finely Chiselled Decorations Emerge – A City Lakeside, A Forgotten Babylon, Endless Labyrinths... Camped In These Dreamlike Landscapes, Rooted In The Foreground, The Oblong Bodies Emerge With Sensuality From The Sea. From The Bottom Of The Table To Rise Towards An Ether Sky.

Often, The Delicate Neck Slightly Tilted Back, A Face Turns Towards The Sky And It Is In Its Gaze That The Hidden Secret Is Reflected. “The Memory Of The Sky” Is There, In The Ink Of The Eyes. It Is The Look Here Which, Like In The Past A Pointed Index Finger, In Mannerist Paintings, Indicates What The Painting Does Not Show, What The Frame Cannot Contain: The Invisible.

So, Our Gaze Anchored In In His, When There Is Silence Around, We Sometimes Also Hear The Wail Of The Violins And The Undulations Of A Voice Coming From So Far Away That We Believe It To Be Eternal. As If The Painter's Work Contained The Song Of Vivaldi's Sabbat Mater Or The Chorus Of Thomas Tallis's Spem In Alium, Which, Often, Flood His Workshop.

Mendrisse's Painting Is A Prayer, With No Other Religion Than That Of Man. Sacred And Profane, Real And Dreamlike, Contemporary And Very Ancient. “Painting Elevates Me”, Said The Painter, His Voice Hushed. « It Allows You To Extract Yourself From Yourself And Rejoin A Reality Of Your Own. Superior, To Connect To The Invisible, Something That Goes Beyond Us. This Is The Deep Motivation Of The One Who Paints As Others Pray. « It’s The Need For Research That Drives Us, Otherwise We Are Nothing. Nothing, Since The Substance We Have Between Our Fingers Regularly Disappears. And That We Handle Things That Do Not Exist».