Biography

Theophile DELAINE is born in 1969 in Champagne. Since his earliest childhood, his parents drove him around in Volkswagen minibus ; Greece, northern Africa, Afghanistan and Nepal, which marked him with a permanent desire for escape and freedom. 

At the age of 19, he went to Paris to study music at the University of Paris VIII and the conservatory. He already liked to draw but he discovered then the world of visual arts and contemporary art of the capital. He then started to follow the curriculum Arts Plastiques at the university, visiting museums of Europe and elsewhere, galleries, exhibitions, 

He will make many very enriching encounters. During all these years of learning, he nevertheless remained faithful to his double bass, following a classical formation and playing in jazz clubs.



He will gradually end up abandoning music for brushes. At 23, he finally embarks on painting. Working on technique, composition, harmony of colors, academical drawings, nudes, landscapes, figurative painting, clay sculpture, wooden sculpture, collages, watercolor, chalk and many others. he tries also to explore the abstract painting toward which he tends even if he's still not satisfied by the result. 

At 26 he leaves to live in Crete where he enjoys drawing portraits of the mountains in the Kafénion. Throughout this time, he seeks to graphically express the need for freedom that characterizes him. Although he appreciates the expressiveness of Paul Rebeyrolles and the great sensitivity of Van Gogh, Zao Wou Ki's painting will ultimately be revealing. 

At 28 years, the pictorial adventure really begins. At 30 years old, he settles in Limousin, sets up a small workshop and paints - a lot, non-stop! He begins to sell paintings, takes up plastic art studies to perfect his theoretical knowledge and organizes his first solo exhibition. But it is not enough to paint to feel free, it has to be lived to paint it.

Then, in 2004, he leaves again and expatriates to Madagascar where, for several years, his own abstract style will flourish. He exposes very regularly in various places on the big island, wondering about the mysteries of existence and our origines.

At 46 years old, he leaves Madagascar for Reunion island where he has been exhibiting his pictorial reflections since the beginning of 2016. Walking in the mountains, close to nature,  and still developing his own picturial language between abstraction and figuration, his painting and his artistic approach acquire an obvious maturity.