Marchal Mithouard

Marchal Mithouard

 

Marchal Mithouard otherwise known in the artist industry as (Shaka) is a 36-year old artist who, for 15 years, has been portraying his contemporaries in their most characteristic expressions.

After he discovered spray paint in 1995, his coloured and sometimes grotesque faces very quickly began to cover the walls of his hometown, Evry. Marchal Mithouard is known for his amazing three dimensional street art inspired paintings. I am intrigued and fascinated at how he can make his paintings seem so life like by using exaggerated perspective and realism to create the illusion of them popping out. Mithouard attaches objects to the painting to create the illusion that individuals are coming to life on the canvas. His technique is known as bas-relief which involves making certain elements of the work more prominent than others by either carving away material or adding new layers. It is not new, having been used widely in parts of Italy during the Renaissance, and even earlier in other parts of the world. He draws influences from a variety of artistic styles such as; painting, sculptures, serigraph, photography and tattooing, and has risen as a major figure in urban art.

For using such intricate shapes and bright colours, I find it interesting how he doesn’t use realistic colours to create his human figures, but instead uses luminescing colours such as, bright blues, greens, yellows and pinks to make it more graffiti like. These are not typical colours for a realistic face but (Shaka) knows how to do and make it work. His paintings appear to have an underlying theme of revolt and rebellion. His influences include Vincent Van Gogh, La Caravage and expressionism.

Marchal has enjoyed art from a very young age, from the age of nine he started oil painting and from there his love for graffiti progressed. He found comfort in graffiti as he would do it for leisure purposes and to express how he was feeling. He now mixes graffiti with traditional painting and his work is a result of all of these experiences. He was influenced by subculture and alternative culture, as well as punk and Jamaican music. At the beginning, he did a lot of small stencils against racism and messages about anarchy, around Jamaican music. Mithouard likes to relate how he works to hip hop, as he feels mixing things to make music is similar to the way he works on canvas, making sculptures and doing graffiti. His first studio was an old factory building in Paris and in 2007, it was the first time he had used the three dimensional effect, which to this day he is known for. He would simply find things on the floor and stick them to his canvas and build his masterpiece from there. The reason he went down the three dimensional route was because he found the flat surface of the canvas or wall too limiting to effectively highlight the absurd behaviour of his characters.

 

Some may argue that Marchal Mithouards works is too violent, too aggressive but he, himself sees this as a compliment. Behind the violence and energetic colour palette lies a message of sensibility. The message that Mithouard (Shaka) is trying to get across is the struggle for individuality in social power politics. Caravaggio is one artist that has influenced Mithouard as his paintings too were also strong and contrasting.

Unlike his paintings, Mithouard is a very calm person but uses art as a way to fight and express his emotions. Much like myself which is why I can relate to this artist. Not only does Marchal Mithouard specialize in figure composition, he also does spectacular portrait work and again uses the vibrancy to capture the emotion and personality. I myself like to experiment with different mediums and movements, so there is almost a similarity between us. Another thing is Mithouard rarely does a painting in black and white as it doesn’t give off a sense of energy, again I find myself relating to this artists as I believe that colour brings a painting to life and adds character to it. I will continue to look at Mithouards work and add elements of his graffiti style to my own work as I find him very inspiring.

I am currently using Mithouard as an inspiration of mine for exploratory media as I am a great fan of his work and i am mesmerised by the vibrant colour he uses. Canvas work fascinates me as it has a great texture to it which allows me build up on my artwork and give that 3D element to it that Marchal successfully creates. Heres an example of me experiementating ad using vibrant colours almost looks rather trippy.

It intriguing how he applies the direction of the colours in the same way as the contours of the face so it still has that realistic feel to it. If you look closely at some of Mithouards work you can see several faces and messages or words within the whole artwork itself. This shows that this 3D graffiti artist has the patience to produce these intricate characters. Below is an fantastic example of this.

As an artist myself who specialises in portraiture I see Marchal as a great example to follow by. His masterpieces almost give the illusion that someone has puked a rainbow on a canvas as you get lost in the colours. I personally think if Mithouard was more of an achromatic artist then I would be less interested in his work. I can identify elements of Van Gogh’s work in his own especially when it comes to his portrait work as soon above.

Funnily enough, Mithouard done his own interpretation of Gogh’s famous portrait which looks almost the same as the real thing but with the slight twist of Marchals style. We can still identify it through the intricate shapes and luminescing colours.