On Fabien Verschaere’s canvases, allegories of dreams and journeys unfold, revealing the inherent mythology of everyday life. This article dives deep into the mechanisms of how his spirituality is sublimated into art.

- Please tell us about the theme you wish to express through your work.

Verschaere: Since the beginning of my career, I have tried to translate my daily life into images that could form a personal mythology.

In 1999, I spent an entire night wondering what the subject matter for a young painter could be. As an administrator of Morandi and his paintings, which always featured the same objects but with different compositions, I had to choose between painting the same subject for the rest of my life or painting everything that life had to offer, knowing that this would lead me to confuse my personal life with my art.

I have no ideas, I have no subject; simply transcribing the history and mythology of my daily life is a goal I strive to achieve. Between my travels and my personal experiences, my work bears witness to the cultures I encounter.

- Please describe your creative process. What aspects do you particularly focus on or take special care with?

Verschaere: I believe that every painting comes from our dreams, and so the unconsciousness of our sleep takes us on journeys, motionless, close to a dreamlike utopia. Canvases are unique. Each Toiles is a brick in a transparent wall that we must build.

I believe in geography and space within a canvas; there is no process in my work. So this is the risk I take every time I dive into space to organise a Comédie de l'ARTE in my head. It's like a hard drive, an alphabetical index of my mind that I've been creating since I was 20. All I do is reproduce a story that I hope is close to the substance.

Whitestone Ginza New Gallery

- Compared to your previous works, are there any notable changes or new techniques/approaches you have experimented with?

Verschaere: Yes, thanks to the exhibition at Whitestone Gallery and discussions with Richard (my manager), I developed an approach based on Yo -kai and try to approach a spirit that is ultimately not so far removed from certain cultures we know in Europe and around the world. I feel close to the Japanese spirit, which sometimes sings me songs of Hieronymus Bosch and leads me into a dance among the monsters and creatures I have always loved.

I created two pieces especially for this exhibition, where the backgrounds are neither red nor white but rather pastel colours. The outlines of the drawings are no longer black, but match the background of the canvas. It is a new journey, a new experience that has enriched me greatly to practise differently. It is not a change of work, it is just trying to have a different perception.

- What meaning is embedded in the concept of this exhibition?

Verschaere: In fact, all my work focuses not on a theme, but on the temporality of my interests. For several years now, I have been interested in Japanese culture, particularly Yo-kai, and so I have tried to integrate Asian and Japanese culture with European culture. Thus, we can find similarities between Northern European culture and Asian culture. I love masks, animals, the idea of life, death and celebration.

As I often say, art is a proposal, not an assertion. I propose images so that everyone can create their own story. It is the viewer who enters the painting to become themselves. The main character is often my self-portrait, as I am the only person I can rely on in the painting.

Whitestone Ginza New Gallery

- Have there been any changes in the art materials you use? (In a previous interview, you mentioned using the Korean traditional paint "SHINHAN.")

Verschaere: For many years, I searched for the materials that would be best suited to my work during my numerous trips to Korea. I discovered watercolours and traditional Korean paper, which are well suited to my style and which I find very pleasant to work with. Inks and water-based paints give me a freedom of action and fluidity that I cannot find elsewhere. I worked a lot with watercolours, then I moved on to traditional paint, which works a bit like acrylic and can be worked on endlessly. It was the contrasts of Shinhan products that really amazed me. I needed colours associated with intense light, a bit like religious paintings. It has to be like an apparition, a feeling of belief beyond drawing and painting.

- In a past interview, you described "daily life as a fairy tale." In your current everyday life, have there been any recent events or scenes that particularly inspired you?

Verschaere: I try to convey the mundane and everyday through overexposure, that is, by amplifying the power of actions to make them mythological during my various residencies. When I was in England at Wimbledon, I came back late from a party and fell in the snow. When I woke up, there was a whole group of foxes. I think it was the mother with her cubs, and she was the one who woke me up. I got up and they suddenly ran away. Since then, I think my totem animal is the fox. It's quite strange because when I was interested in Japanese culture, I discovered the kitsune, and since then, the image and thought of this character has haunted me.

Whitestone Ginza New Gallery

- Regarding holding an exhibition in Japan, do you have any special feelings or expectations toward the Japanese audience or culture? Also, have you been influenced by any aspects of Japan's art scene or aesthetic sensibility?

Verschaere: There has always been a part of me that expresses itself outside of Europe. Japan came to France in the 1980s through pop culture, cartoons and manga, and then during my studies, I learned that the Impressionists and the Nabis had taken a keen interest in Japanese art, with many dealers returning with prints, notably by Hokusai.

I have been influenced by my studies and thanks to Jean Marc Bustamante, who often exhibited in Japan. I am very interested in many artists, particularly in the 1990s when, thanks to the illustrator Moebius, I met the artist and animator Hayao Miyazaki. He is the pop icon of my life. It is thanks to him that I understood that tradition and modernity could be combined to create a truly modern journey.

Of course, I am also influenced by Hokusai, Tohaku Hasegawa, and Hasui Kawase. In addition to these masters, I am deeply inspired by Takashi Murakami; his influence has been as important to me as that of Andy Warhol.

In short, their Japanese style has always brought a poetry very close to animism and an idea of nature, always very close to what defines me as a human being.

Whitestone Ginza New Gallery

- After this exhibition, are there any projects or themes you're considering as your next step? If there are areas you'd like to explore more deeply in your future creative work, please share them.

Verschaere: I still have many canvases to paint, with lots of new experiences and new subjects that are dear to me. I have several projects related to hospitals and children in hospitals. It is very important to me to share my experience.

I want to continue painting murals in museums and private spaces. This is important to me because it bears witness to a specific moment in an artist's life. I have three major projects that I would like to do: three large canvases on the Divine Comedy, Don Quixote and Mozart's Requiem, which I consider to be three universal and timeless works. I am not yet very old, but I am aware of and want to leave behind works linked to intellectual and universal connections that are popular and that everyone can understand.

Whitestone Ginza New Gallery

There are still countless stories left to be told on Verschaere’s canvases. This interview serves as a small waypoint to mark his current expressive coordinates, and I look forward to seeing how his future work gives birth to new mythologies.

Liaisons Imaginaires: GO YAYANAGI, FABIEN VERSCHAERE