August 28th, 1994
Pierre Vallon : a lover of pastels
Legend : the farm "de la Brosse" .
Pastel of Pierre Vallon, 1992

Meeting with Pierre Vallon, artist painter "saint-avertinois" famous, close to Nature and to impressionnists. One of our articles published recently reminds him besides of memories.

NR : Do you know Saint-Avertin well?
Pierre Vallon : "Very well; my father was teacher at the school "Léon Brûlon" during the thirties years. We lived then in the flat of former schools. An anecdote: I remember, it was in 1934, the ceiling of the canteen had fallen, the pupils and I, we were sheltered under tables".
NR : You were sensitive to the article appeared in NR of August 23rd (page 7). Why?
PV : "This article speaks of the Farm "de la Brosse" the photo is besides eloquent. And this farm, I discovered it, some years ago. 16 août 1992, with the agreement of his owner, Mr Boutet, I made a pastel of."
NR : But your pastel has got nothing to do with the photo?
PV : "The viewpoint is not the same; the article said : "We access it (in the farm) by a portal between two pillars sharpened in stony blocks"; it is what is seen on my pastel not on the photo."
NR : Why a pastel paiting and not an oil on canvas for example?.
PV : "Because pastel painting is accomplishable in some hours. An oil on canvas, it is much longer. Manet sometimes dedicated to it more than three months! The only oils on canvas which I agree to paint are imposed on me when I cannot go out (rain, cold); I take then one of my pastel paintings and I make a reproduction of it on a canvas, there time, length don't hurry me."
NR : And to paint according to other paintings than yours, have you already thought of it?
PV : "Never, it would be for me a "disgrace". I will feel being only a copyist; and I want that each of my paintings, is unique. Nothing irritates me more than these painters who produce 10, 20, 30 times the same painting; this is not art, it is repetitive job, without interest."
NR : Your productions are always figurative, can you explain it?
PV : "I have Masters, the big names of the impressionism painting. I name in the order of my preferences: Pissarro – lover as me of Nature – Sisley, Monet, Renoir. The pastel fits particularly to the impressionism painting. He adopts his boldness, his transgressions, as to represent in blue, a foliage of tree, to envelop group in a general fuzziness».

Good-humoured, bland, gifted with the sense of hearing – three virtues not always spread among human people, artists or not – Pierre Vallon gets annoyed only on a subject : the sale of its paintings.
He explains it eloquently :
PV :  "I am retired (I was decorator and shop fitter), and I am lucky to not have financial need.  It is perfect because I am terribly reluctant to the idea to separate me of my works.  I pile up them in my studio, such of the "well wise children" in a class, presenting them with pleasure to those asks me to see them, not to buy them.  I have about five hundred ; five hundred that do not sleep because I communicate with them, or watch them.  Each of them - painting - has it personal history and speaks to me.  I am not able to break the emotional report that unites me to them ; which explains that I did not want to sell the farm de la Brosse to Mr. Boutet or a pastel painting of the Castle of Artigny to his owner, Mr. Rabier, and nevertheless they have insisted!".

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