TATTOO
PAINTING
My name is Maxime Le Guyader, my artist name is SUFFER THE JOY
I was born in Angers, France in 1992. After spending few years in Barcelona, I’m now living in Brussels, Belgium. My life today is split between painting, tattooing, sewing, skateboarding and collecting art stuffs from my travels.
I would define my painting as brut, naive, figurative, primitive and sometimes abstract even if I don't think there is such definition.
I can use differents mediums from cupboard to canvas, I like to find most of my supplies and give a second life to any materials. I’m attracted in big scale artworks because of the freedom of movement it gives and the facility to express myself in it, a real transmission of what I have in mind during the creative process.
« It's a way of thinking and probably a way of life. »
« Art allows me to discuss any subjects and to confront opinions. »
I usually paint Masks and write things around, I like to play with words, make jokes and to talk about society and sensitive subjects with a touch of humor. A paradoxical approach of the world I'm living in.
I want people to react to what they are looking/reading and why not change there point of view on variable subjects.
Art allows me to discuss any subjects and to confront opinions.
I feel like it's a way where I can express my thoughts behind a canvas.
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Also I’m influenced by the tattoo art world, one of the oldest art known by many civilisations through the time. To me, with a tattooer approach, I’m trying to bring a new eye of the old designs in a poetic way, mixing them with a touch of engraving, fine lines and dot-works. I'm also attracted into tribal art and old rock caves designs and I try to translate them on skin and canvas. Tattooing is a collaboration between an artist and an human body, viewing each mark as a sort of expression. I have to admit that I don’t feel like a tattooer but more like an artist who can tattoo also.
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In General, I like to experiment and I can be interested in many tools and techniques. I always try to make something new and special, something that nobody have seen before. To me it’s important that the watchers can create their own interpretation. I let them free to discuss and interpret my paintings as they want.
Most of the time, my imagination controls my movements even if I got a special idea of what I'm painting. I trust my feelings and I let them improvise for me. I like to use different colors and play with them, bringing my paintings alive.
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I mostly use acrylics, pastels, spray paints and ink. There are easy to find, to use and they dry fast. I like it this way for now but I’m still curious to try different mediums in the future. I do start my paintings with an idea, something I probably saw or heard before, but most of them will be improvised on the moment, depending the materials I’ve got and the mood I am in.
« To me it’s about sharing the way we experience life and the way we create our own reality. »
« I got to feed the need. »
When I start a painting I directly go for it, no preparation. I usually start by doing a background and that will automatically build the future painting. For the rest I let it comes as easy as it can go. Some paintings will takes few minutes and others will take months, depending the size or the message I want to deliver. Usually I work on different paintings at the same time, I like the balance processing this way. Everything can change during the making. That's what art is all about, you can paint over and over, you are the only one deciding when it’s done or not.
I work in my own studio in Brussels. A place full of small objects and weird things that submerge me into another world. I like to go to flea-markets and collect all kinds of objects, creating a very inspirational environment. My studio is a part of my creating process, it's the space where I feel free to create and express myself surrounded by my objects which helps me to link my ideas. It’s a private environment where only few people are allowed.
To me art is a tool, an universal language that everybody is free to interpret and learn from, a way to discover new perspectives. Art plays with our emotions and with something that stimulates our individual thoughts and gives powerful reactions through our senses.
Art involves imagination, conceptual ideas and beauty. To me it’s about sharing the way we experience life and the way we create our own reality. Finally I think it’s all about leaving marks on our natural habitat.
I usually feel a natural obsession to paint, I always got to feed the need. My ideas and inspirations comes from whatever like movies, books, pictures, street art, tattoos, music, society subjects or others artworks. I feel like I will never be able to paint all those ideas, but I'm trying to do the most of it. Some ideas disappears and new ones comes, it's a perpetual circle of inspiration. At the same time, I’ve always been attracted to brut/primitive artworks, when it can be emotionally deep and simple. I'm also fascinated by the ancestral rock cave art, the primitive tribal art and African masks and statuettes.
I’ve always felt like creating stuff and I don't know where this motivation comes from. It's an inexplicable force that takes me over, an invisible power ordering me to paint. This obsession is more than a passion, it's a way of thinking and probably a way of life.