Commissions
Two millimetres, built over weeks
A commission is not a request for a picture. It is an agreement to let a surface accumulate — gesso, engraved acrylic, oil, wax, mineral pigment, layer over layer, until the relief stands roughly two millimetres above the panel and begins to hold light.
There is no faster version of this. The slowness is not a scheduling problem to be worked around; it is what the work is made of. A commissioned piece takes the same months a piece made for exhibition takes, because it is made the same way.
What a commission does allow is specificity: a scale chosen for a particular wall, a subject arrived at together, an object or a memory carried into the still life. The vocabulary stays — fruit, flowers, jade, the soft form laid over something harder underneath. What changes is which soft form, and what is underneath it.
What can be discussed
Open
Scale and proportion. The dominant palette. Which objects enter the composition, including personal ones — a piece of jade, an inherited object, something with a history worth burying under layers. The register: quieter and more withdrawn, or more saturated and more frontal.
Not open
The technique, which is fixed. Reproductions or variants of existing works. Portraits, figures, and likeness of any kind. Subjects supplied as a photograph to be copied. Work made to match a specific colour scheme or interior palette.
This is not a matter of preference. The relief method takes months precisely because the image is arrived at through building it, and a predetermined result cannot survive that process.
The process
-
An initial exchange about the space, the scale and what draws you to the work. Photographs of the wall, its dimensions and its light. If the fit isn't right, this is where that becomes clear, and there is no obligation on either side.
-
A written proposal covering direction, dimensions, materials, timeline and price. Where useful, a small preparatory study. The proposal is specific enough to agree on, and open enough to leave the making room to move.
-
Work begins once the proposal is accepted and the deposit received. You receive documentation at two or three points during the build — not for approval, but because watching a relief accumulate is part of what you have commissioned.
-
The finished piece is photographed properly and documented with a signed certificate. Delivery within Paris in person; elsewhere by specialist art shipping.
Scale and price
Price follows scale and depth of work rather than time, and is set at the proposal stage once the dimensions are fixed. Commissioned pieces are priced consistently with available works of comparable size.
Prices are given in writing, on request, and are not negotiated.
The current commission list runs to [X] months. Early enquiry is worth it for work intended around a specific date.
A 40% deposit confirms the commission and secures the place in the schedule. The balance falls due on completion, before delivery.
The deposit is non-refundable once work has begun, and covers materials and reserved studio time. Should the finished piece not be accepted, it returns to the studio and may be exhibited or sold, with no balance due.
Timelines given are honest rather than optimistic. Where a piece is running late, you will hear it early.
-
Not as a source to copy. But an object, a place or an image with personal weight can enter the composition and be transformed by it — that is a different and much more interesting proposition.
-
No. Existing works are unique and are not repeated. A commission can share their world without repeating them.
-
Up to [dimensions]. Beyond that, relief on this scale becomes structurally and practically difficult, and the work is better served by several panels.
-
Between [X] and [Y] months from acceptance, plus the current waiting time. This is not compressible.
-
Yes, by specialist art shipping, at the client's cost. Crating, insurance and customs documentation are arranged from the studio.
-
Studio visits in Boulogne-Billancourt are possible by appointment, and are the only way to see how a two-millimetre surface actually behaves. Photographs do not carry it.
-
Yes, on the same terms. The work is not made to a scheme, but the placement conversation is often more precise and more productive with someone who knows the space.