Portrait: Floréal Daura, the other side of a provencal poet and painter...

He is known to love Stetsons-he already has a good hundred of these cowboy hats that shelter him from the sun and the rain. In fact, you never see him without one on his head. He also wears cowboy vests and Camargue-style shirts. He has been riding since he was a boy and he paints. Leading the bulls on horseback, petanque players, a game of cards, the May day horse fair in Saint Rémy, a tramp, boats in Grau du Roi, a shepherd and his sheep, angelus on horse-back... When Floréal talks about his paintings, with scenes of the kind that adorn the walls of his living room and studio, he doesn't just rhyme off the subjects; he explains them in a colorful language that his all own.
" I paint the people that walk the earth and who make the heart of Provence beat. Those who plant trees, who build houses, who furrow the land, these people never die. It's thanks to people like them that people like us, the poets and the painters of this world, can exist", he says with his rich voice.
Thinking back back on it, those words were very said in a very dalish manner. Then he suddenly changes the subject. Or at least that is what you think. he's off an a tangible memory brought to the surface by the magic of colors and forms; memories that he draws you into until finally you become part of them. That's just the way he is. Floréal Daura cam make us smell, see and taste when we have lost the habit of smelling, seeing and tasting and he does it just with words. He makes us live his paintings.
Floréal is also a story teller. he writes stories for children; serenades to bring tears of joy to their eyes. "If you want to know what happiness is, you have to live with happy people". And that is his recipe. As for his painting, it's his delight, his passion. "When people are happy, when their eyes begin to sparkle, that's when I'm happy. It's like cooking. When my friends say "Now, that's good!" well my heart just soars. Watching people, seeing their beauty, being their mirror...Happiness is the exchange of a deep glow."
As he speaks he repeats over and over again his message of love for he is a poet but he is also a visionary; a visionary who sees the hidden side of living beings and things. He has developed this faculty with, or maybe because of, a particularity that he has. He's almost blind like if he were looking trough the eye of a needle. His eyes are "mine fields", as he says. Yet he doesn't like the term "partially sighted". "It's such an unromantic expression. I prefer to say blinded, blinded by the sun, by love, by passion. I see less but I see differently. I tend to say that I see better because I see right to the bottom of things. it helps me progress in my work", he declares.
Like his father (he was a plumber who had a forge) before him, he gas worked stone and iron with fire and water. As he had always dreamt of being an artist, that is what he became. Among other things, he studied engraving and ceramics with Louis Jou.
"I even worked alongside Picasso for six months", he adds. Today, he likes to pass on his experience. Using a drawing method based on the senses that he developed himself, he gives lessons all over the world (from Europe to South America). One of his young students gave him the best compliment ever, "you have taught me to see"...