An open-air studio
Internal ascents

Born in 1962 at Vallorbe, where the mountains are as omnipresent as they are gentle and wooded, painter Eric Martinet never misses an opportunity to ‘gain altitude’ in order to immortalize the mountain landscapes. Up there, in this open-air studio, he looks at the mountains with a poetic eye. Mountain Report lets him explain…

Text and illustrations: Eric Martinet

"The mountain… I believe quite simply that I like being there. Part of this probably lies in the fact that the word is particularly shrewd here. I feel good in the mountains. I am perfectly aware that it can reveal itself to be threatening and yet a mountain reassures me. It can become exhausting, but it calms me. When it wants to be demanding, I adapt to its whims.
A bit like the majority of people, certainly, the mountain knows how to reflect the extent of myself as ‘number one’. I feel very small. This is not so from a physical aspect as, whilst it reveals, or otherwise wakes in me what yields to the lethargy of a sedentary and city life, it pushes you into the rediscovery of simple and noble sentiments, like those which are brought to life in our games and our childhood dreams. It plunges me back into these happy days where acts of absolute bravery vie with moments of great reverie! The happiness of rediscovery
It’s been some years now that a sketchbook has accompanied me in my travels. It doesn’t warrant the goal of a trip, yet it has become one of those objects which, if they are missing from your kit, weigh heavily by their absence. It’s a bit like a forgotten raincoat or a flask which has remained empty... I amass a multitude of drawings there which are worked directly out of the landscape. These drafts rarely have any other aim than to embody a little of the happiness of rediscovering the mountain and myself.

It takes a number of drawings and a number of sketchbooks, prior to daring the simplistic gesture consistent with using one of these to do a painting. Rather reticent initially, I felt at ease fairly quickly. In no way did I have the sentiment of sterile, superfluous repetition, but rather a sensation of the reinterpretation of a musical score with new instruments. Nowadays it is fairly commonplace for me to adopt a ‘jazzman’ attitude when I’m experimenting with these toings and froings between the sky, the travel sketchbooks and the zenithal light of the painting…

In front of what I dare to consider as a few ascents crowned with success, I suspect a secret complicity between the mountain and the painting, from the moment that you claim to draw a little something from it which is ennobling…

One like the other, force us to come face to face with something we would perhaps prefer to avoid. We don’t benefit from one or the other without some effort. You can’t escape from one or the other either, without affirming some clear choices. They ask the right questions… those which require an immediate response, on pain of remaining in the same place. In painting, as is the case in the mountains, certain bivouacs can show themselves to be hazardous, and if there are any ways out, then they are up there! Doubtless, one like the other are places which enable you to learn about yourself, so yes, decidedly I do like to be in the mountains… quite simply because it enables me to find myself there."

Read the rest of the article in the Mountain Report magazine - Where to find ?