“Painting comes from the place where words can no longer be expressed.”
Gao Xingjian/ From Soul Mountain
A word from the Artist: the perception of impermanence, from the matter to the light, until it glares like a serene dissolution.
“The substance of objects, in the light, gradually loses its materiality. Light slowly becomes dominant over the form that remains present, but the matter soon dissolves or fades into the light. The dialogue between colour and transparency, fluidity and movement, matter and opacity is a way to tell a story by transfiguring reality through the play of light vibrations that stimulate spatial tensions.
Attentive to the passage of time, to the subtle modulations of light, I am particularly interested in translating transient and impalpable natural phenomena. The subjects represented are then only suggested, “accidents” or “fragments”, although always in symbolic correlation, and will continue to materialize memories and feelings, passages, a balance between emptiness and fullness, the yin and the yang, to create a dynamic that is that of impermanence but also that of resilience, my cathartic quest. Light guides me in my quest for harmony and balance. My painting gently glides from the material to the light until it dazzles." — Dominique Meunier.
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"...His contemplative approach to the landscape translates a mystical vision of nature and life. It emphasizes the importance of atmospheric rendering and light effects announcing the journey from one world to another. After having lived an experience at the frontiers of death, Dominique Meunier is driven by the desire to make perceptible the link between reality, vital territory and the dark space of finitude. In this process of emergence, silence takes its place. It marks a temporal suspension, a space in a feeling of eternity. Conceived as as many substitutions as unexpected connections, Dominique Meunier's work reads like an endless continuum. From depth to illumination, from darkness to revelation, this truly dazzling journey of reinvented, jostled landscapes brings a piece of dream, a gateway where the memento mori resonates. Ecstasy is poetic, vibrant and melancholy...". Excerpt from the review of Caroline Canault, Art critic
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"Dominique Meunier’s work is characterized by its voids and realistic silences. As the perfect balance of yin and yang, his paintings also have filled forms and embracing curves. His work should be read as a genuine elegy to nature’s beauty in its most inspiring and soothing form. His production process is complex and lengthy. As a philosopher, he does not let his work become static; he gives the opportunity for a second print birth which, by mending torments, allows us to see more clearly. Dominique Meunier questions the vibrant, symbolic and bright side of nature. The peace prevailing in the poetry and the balance of his landscapes takes us, in between transience and persistence, to a meditative state. As Claude Monet in Giverny before him, Dominique Meunier has his own indoor water garden. In the idealism of a reinvented Chinese nature and the Zen atmosphere of a Japanese garden, water lilies are floating, as well as the impression of a newfound absolute ". Excerpt from the review of Sarah HEUSSAFF, French specialist in Disability Arts.
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“The painter returns from an entrance into the Light, the one that comes from the real around the over-real that became the figure of Eternity. Here the fragile crossing between geological and telluric strata spreads towards the presence of the Mystery, its essential axis in the first step of the day. A miracle takes place and is renewed in the painter’s colours: this perpetual harmonic of a rebirth that is always repeated. Only one thing is to be expected from Dominique MEUNIER’s painting: its paintbrush and its colours that in their brilliance rekindle the lights upwards. The painter came out of himself, tangentially, repaint the sky for every Man in the night. In this gift of light, Dominique MEUNIER powdered the world with a wisdom as the open sky of an East where our days are born. Here comes the time for song, and praise. A painter who brings stars into the endless space of the rustles of silence, Dominique MEUNIER takes his path back, saying the absolute beauty, his voice of living light”. Excerpt from the text of Martine PIERRE-PILON, philosopher and author, painter-engraver, on the painting “My path”
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"... At the last sun of the evening, when it slowly disappears behind the mountains, the landscape is set ablaze in a final gift that only those who look beyond can see. This special vibration of unalterable beauty emerges. As a spectator I measure what has been given to me and will never be taken back. The immense calm of a radiant nature that is self-sufficient. I am invited by it and would never possess it, well after me it will continue to marvel, to offer itself to our eyes with total plenitude. Then I measure the infinity of our lives and its finiteness...". Excerpt from the text of Christine Ramoni, daughter of the Swiss painter and glass maker Bodjol on the painting «Ocean»
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"...Balance between the threatening verticals of the forest and the unfathomable clarity of the water. It is this balance which, in my opinion, characterises the way this painter works, between yin and yang, that his approach to China made him discover, between shadow and light, the coldness of greens and the warmth of ochres. The whole painting is based on this fusion of opposites, on the underlying harmony of this light in the forest.." Michel Woronoff. Professor Emeritus of the Faculties. Member of the National Conference of Provincial Academies (CNA). Author and translator, specialist of Homer, The Iliad and The Odyssey. Excerpt from the text on the painting " Odyssey".