Homage to Bernard

I'm long overdue a blog post on how my show went ( well) and other things, but today I'd like to talk about Bernard Lacoque, a very talented artist who I've just found out passed away this week.

Bernard was an incredibly prolific artist, and one who was warmhearted and generous with his praise of others. The joy of a place like Redbubble is finding artists whose work is radically different, yet you can wholeheartedly enjoy and appreciate each others work - and a relationship of sorts, of mutual support and recognition, springs up, and before you know it develops in to a friendship of a kind. Not long ago, Bernard commented on my Valle d'Or series, and I replied back it would be great to see them in a gallery . 'yes', he said, 'then I'll come and see them!' - Would that he had been well enough to do so.





Bernard's images were a punctuation in my day - they would pop up in my image feed, and though I didn't comment on every one, they would always make me smile. He had a gift for sad faces, for cartoon like drawings that were expressive and touching.

He drew on whatever came to hand - books, lottery tickets, newspapers, sometimes feeding in to the story behind the art, as with the 'resistance' piece at the bottom. No titles for him, all drawings were 'face', or 'bird', or 'nude' - his three favourite subjects. I just bought a calender of his 'faces', so I'll still see his pictures every day. But I wish I had done it when he was alive, so he could know how much I loved his pictures.




I didn't know Bernard well - I didn't even know he had been ill. But I did like him tremendously, and I treasured our dialogue, as I do with a good few Redbubble artists. He was funny, clever, and utterly unique in his artistic style. I will miss him greatly.