Courchia, Jean-Paul
French Impressionist
The interplay of light and shadows is not by accident in the works by French artist Jean-Paul Courchia. And the basic constriction of many famous works of art is also not by accident. Jean-Paul Courchia comes to the Westport River Gallery in Westport, Connecticut by way of France. The physician-lecturer-artist’s oil paintings on canvas are displayed in Marseille in the famous Provencal Gallery Jouvène, which Van Gogh and Cezanne called home for their art work. Her Highness Queen Paola of Belgium and Madame Nobutaka Shinomiya, wife of the Consul of Japan in Marseille, are avid collectors of his work.
He is also a medical doctor of endocrinology and metabolic diseases, and fascinated by science, art, medicine, perceptions, and light. He is working with the department of ophthalmology in Saint-Joseph’s hospital in Marseille and he is often requested to give lectures in France about the visual strategy of visitors in front of paintings. Measurements of eye movements in the discovery of a painting show how vision is often disconnected from the brain. Starting out from a preliminary study into the behaviour of museum visitors, and in particular the average time spent in front of a picture (about 12 seconds), his research is intended to highlight the information picked up by viewer exploring various paintings. One of his videos shows the eye gaze strategies in paintings by Henri Matisse and Francisco Goya.
In a work presented at the French Society of Ophthalmology in Paris in May 2007, he realized the exploration of the last painting of Van Gogh, and shows how the artistic information conducts the eye of the spectator. Thru this painting we discover the artist’s brain in his last moments. Through the eye tracking study in this painting we are able to maybe discover also, the artist’s state of mind in his last moments. Westport River Gallery in Westport, Connecticut is pleased to exclusively represent the artist in Connecticut.