Which artist/photographer do you admire or has had the biggest influence on your work?
At the age of fifteen, in front of Turner’s ships in flames - my first true artistic revelation - I came to understand the strength of suggestion in paintings and from then on decided to become a painter.

My first academic influences were the paintings and drawings of old masters like Rembrandt, Vermeer, Géricault, Frans Hals, Delacroix, Ingres and many others. Impressionists such as Turner, Whistler, Degas, Renoir, Monet, Manet, Cézanne, Van Gogh, Caillebotte, Gauguin as well as Hopper, Vuillard, Bonnard, Klimt, Schiele, De Stael have all showed me the way towards my artistic journey.

How do you feel about formal training?
I think that formal training is important because it is necessary to have a maximum of technical tools to be able to free oneself from basic constraints. On the other hand, it is not necessary to know all the techniques, but the most important one is to be able to use those tools which will allow you to reveal the artist you really are.

How do you bring emotion across to a flat surface?
The subject and the figure allow me to paint my expression through which I can deliver my most intimate feelings. The composition of lines, colors, intensities, lights and also material enable me to give life and accuracy to my emotions.

Do you have a ritual or specific process you follow when creating art?
When I decide on my subject, I need solitude and, consequently, silence. That is why I like painting late at night. I also need music to forget myself - this helps me to find my rhythm to bring my gestures and my feelings together. I paint so much to get inspired and continue until fatigue makes me stop working.

Must there be a statement with each creation?
I think it is inevitable, but not necessarily using words. The best statement of a viewer for me is when my work evokes a live sensation or a feeling which touches him profoundly. When I see that I touched the viewer’s heart, then he can see my work over and over again and always discover a new level of emotions.

Jean-Noël Delettre - O&S summer 2009

Paysages d'hiver / PDF article 2 pages

"En choisissant un plan rapproché, un travail en pâte, des couleurs éclatantes et des contrastes accentués, Jean-Noël Delettre peint avec justesse la majesté des cimes des Alpes."

"LE CONTEXTE
La diversité des paysages d'alpages ou de cimes, la force qui s'en dégage imprègnent l'imaginaire de jean-Noël Delettre. Ascension, brume au loin, fait partie d'une série de tableaux proposant des vues rapprochées des pics et des crêtes. ces fragments du réel exposés côte à côte donnent l'impression d'une suite de détails autonomes d'un même paysage. Dans une même démarche, Jean-Noël Delettre fait par ailleurs évoluer sa peinture vers des portraits, des corps en mouvement."

Françoise Coffrant