Nicolas Galtier
The power of pattern
While the work of Nicolas Galtier relates to, in its appearance, a style of painting that art history has dubbed “pattern painting” (that’s to say, painting that focuses on design, texture, and lighting rather than on figuration), it’s completely off the mark to see this work simply as decorative painting. Pattern, for this artist, is not merely coterminous with a search for balance and harmony, but is doubled with an ambition to turn this purely aesthetic quest into the point of departure for a new approach to the vision and energy that is contained within this pursuit of balance: “In each of my paintings,” writes Nicolas Galtier, “I would like to succeed in translating the presence of the sacred and, in the same movement, give the sense that the sacred is simply a level of appearance, an attitude of the Spirit toward the images it creates.” It is toward such an attitude of the Spirit that we will now meditate on.
