extrait de la revue Artclub Gallery de Lyon

Jean-Pierre Le Bras a toujours tenu un pinceau à la main, et les ciels et la mer de cette Bretagne qui l’a vu naître ont fait le reste. Il y a trouvé sa palette, ses lignes, ses formes, le but et la raison de son voyage sur terre. Son oeuvre est comme un long poème, une ode à la nature que l’homme a si rageusement domestiquée, mais qui conserve au fond d’elle son caractère sauvage et rebelle. Nul ne mettra la mer en coupe réglée, Jean-Pierre Le Bras le sait bien, lui qui en connaît les moindres traits, les moindres nuances, qui a été bercé depuis sa naissance par les remous des flots et les caprices du ciel. Comme Eugène Boudin, il est capable de donner aux nuages ces formes qui en précisent l’heure et le temps. Rebelle à toute influence, à toute main mise sur sa création, sur sa liberté d’expression, il cultive sa propre individualité, en toute indépendance. Exceptionnellement doué, c’est en amoureux qu’il arpente les sentiers de douaniers qui longent les côtes, un carnet de croquis et un crayon à la main, il note ainsi jour après jour les paysages changeants qui sont l’apanage du pays d’Armor.

Il connaît un à un tous les bateaux de pêcheurs, les maisons de granit rose ou gris, les arbres malmenés par le vent. Il ne lui reste plus ensuite qu’à transposer sur la toile les riches couleurs qu’il décline dans leurs plus subtiles nuances. Elles lui viennent spontanément et se placent exactement là où il faut, là où il l’a décidé. Jean-Pierre Le Bras a forgé luimême son style, sans l’aide de personne, mais à force d’observation, de communion avec la mer, avec ces paysages qui font partie de lui. Il a la Bretagne au fond des yeux et du coeur, au bout du pinceau, et sans aucun doute, il pourrait la peindre même les yeux fermés. La lumière qui inonde ses toiles y est unique, partout présente, point d’orgue de son oeuvre.

The official painter of the navy, Jean-Pierre Le Bras has always held a paintbrush in his hands, and the skys and seas of this Brittany where he grew up have done the rest. There, he found his palette, his lines, shapes, purpose and reason for his journey across the land. His works are like a long poem, and ode to nature that man has so frantically subjugated, but which retains deep down its wild, unruly temper. Nobody will ever be able to control the sees, as Jean-Pierre le Bras well knows, having always been familiar with its slightest features and nuances and having been lulled since his childhood by the swirl of its waves under the changing skies. Like Eugène Boudin, he can give shapes to clouds which give an indication of time and hour. Impervious to all influence and control over his creation and freedom of expression, he cultivates his own individual style in total independence. An exceptionally gifted painter, he lovingly paces up and down the nature trails along the coasts, with a pencil and sketchbook in his hand. Everybody has seen him sketching. He knows all the fishing boats individually, as well as the grey and pink granite houses and trees battered by the wind. He then only has to transpose onto his paintings the rich colours which he modulates in their most subtle nuances. They come to him spontaneously and go exactly where they should go, where he tells them to go. Jean-Pierre owes his own distinctive style to nobody else but to his talents as an observer and to his communion with nature and the landscapes which are part of him. He has Brittany under his skin, in his eyes and heart, at the tip of his paintbrush and no doubt, he could paint it with his eyes closed. The light suffusing his paintings is unique, omnipresent crowning his works.