Jolyon Dupuy

Born 24th March 1956 in Bromley, Kent.

Now residing in Ladywell, South London.

Occupation: Shipbroker

"I have always collected beautiful beach objects. In the mid- nineties, I was inspired by my young children to construct a small boat from found objects and since then it has become a regular activity involving large beach constructions as well as smaller works for both interior and exterior residential spaces".

Jolyon Dupuy:  Artist

We have established well-defined categories in a vain attempt to describe the indescribable: 

The visual experience.

Drawing. Painting. Sculpture.

Jolyon Dupuy is not a draughtsman, he is not a painter, he is not a sculptor.

Jolyon Dupuy is an artist.

Visual art is not about reading, writing, listening or, indeed, seeing.  

Visual art is an experience.

My first encounter with Jolyon Dupuy's work took place, this Summer, walking my pug dog on the beach in Kingsdown, a small village on the South-East coast near Deal where I live.

From a distance, I set eyes on this very beautiful 'thing'. Here my 'vain' attempt to describe the 'indescribable':

Having been a dealer and collector of paintings for 15 years, I was, initially, incapable of escaping the constraints of art historical categorizing:

My first reaction: a most magical drawing set against sea and sky, perhaps rather oddly, thinking about Michelangelo's powerful drawing of a Mourning Woman. Approaching 'it': a sculpture! And then ... no: a painting! Hoping to be on safe territory, it all disintegrated within seconds ... feeling shattered, until I realized it did not fit into any category – except one: my own, very personal and private visual experience – indescribable. 

I am referring to the Pon – beautifully illustrated on this website.

I am deeply indebted to the artist Jolyon Dupuy: I now understand.

Deal, September 2006

Angus Neill
Felder
Old Master and Modern Paintings
www.felder.co.uk

Jolyon Dupuy (Driftwood Broker)

Driftwood broker, flotsam and jetsam pirate, trover of the Thames-side, you are the ones who are doing it – so says he – Dupuy, who is actually doing it, and doing it like a maniac possessed by finding and looking and making, and most of all by nothing at all, but sea and sky and the poetic of gradual change, the inevitable degradation of matter, and by fascination which arises phoenix like out of the ashes of destruction to bring new vital growth and regeneration.

He is on automatic, magnetizing trouve, the detritus of spent lifes and disguarded dreams into newborn constellations. Every summer at Kingsdown in Kent, overlooking the haunting Goodwins, mermaids, dragons, neon octopi appear as if by magic upon the pebbled beach to the delight of all comers who wonder at these childlike reversions made by the man who talks to wood, yes, and the wood talks back to him in an endless drifting dialogue, hundreds of years old, years of sunshine and waves, of nights and days, the human timescale lost into eons of rise and fall, fret and swell, the natural spheres unwound and unwinding still.

This art is not sophisticated but beautifully innocent, not naïve, nor intellectual, but purified by endless tides and salty brine absorbed into fissures and ancient peg holes, into knotty planks and ingrained beams which become metamorphosed in the large careful hands of Dupuy (who is actually a giant at 6 feet 6 inches) into ancient mariners and modern icons whimsical, humorous and psycho surreal.

These pieces are not stuck, but fixed, and very finely worked too, almost invisibly so. Thirty years of Shipbroking for a prosperous city firm, stevedore strength and captains bloodline combine to give Dupuy an eerie continuum aligned with the seven seas and an intimate knowledge of global shipping.

Acknowledging the need for compromise but never actually succumbing to it, bringing to the red brick walls of Ladywell, Lewisham an ambiguous relationship through art with life and everything, like a skipper ever respectful of the undercurrent, or a caricaturist in conflict with cartoon reality and enjoying the battle with mind and element, decimating, desecrating and completely destroying only to bring back to life in the next frame, the Great Gonzo, Deputy Dawg, the Simpson’s, sad and happy folks, the Buddha, noble warrior ever looking out and beyond.

William Longden