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Illustrations : Emmanuel Hyronimus

Since the beginning of the school year, Marie-Christine, agent and founder of Colagene, has been working closely with all the artists to revamp the entire portfolios on the Colagene website. Emmanuel Hyronimus enthusiastically took part in creating this surprising series of editorial explorations. Keep an eye out because many new features are presented through the revised portfolios and monthly newsletters.

Here is our 20th Creative Capsule. This month, we are inviting you to meet Emmanuel Hyronimus

Quickly describe your creative lab?
I try to change it as often as I can. You don’t let the body get used to it. It’s all about it. Tilt the body, to free the mind. I live on top of a hill, it must influence my perspective. To have a look that floats over the city.

In two sentences, how would you describe your working technique?
If I sometimes add color on my iPad, I draw mostly in black ink on paper. A line for me is magical, it is like a thread that prolongs me, that unrolls my thought. Depending on the project, I draw from the real, from photographs, from an idea... or I let the ink take me completely, on an unknown path. I like that part of the drawing can escape me. It is then a language close to poetry.

What is the project you are most proud of?
I need to tame each project and take it to my imagination. This is what clients who trust me expect. For this I must sometimes move away from it, twist it, reformulate its contours... This is the most difficult part. I am happy when the two worlds come together, that they resonate.

What are your favorite colors to create?
A black & white drawing contains all the colors, it allows the eye to evolve within its own palette, to make its own journey. The reader’s gaze then helps to make it exist. Dive into the drawing, get lost in it. I love this freedom of reading, take this time. This is one of the forces of drawing. One moment to dream. Escape. When I add color, I’m usually divided between effective minimalism and a generous explosion! One or two bright and acidic colors to reinforce a graphic impact, or less saturated colors, for the emotion, but always letting the black line express itself!

Why did you become an illustrator?
Drawing has always been part of my daily life. It’s a double way for me to be in the world: drawing it and dreaming it. Draw it to catch it, capture it, grab it and try to understand it. And dream of it to flee from it, to escape from it and go to all that it’s not.

In four words, how would you describe your style of illustrations?
Drawing is a catalyst of worlds, external or internal. Mine are poetic, often playful, all the time, blending humour and emotion, at best.

What is your dream project?
I went to Japan alone for a month. I came back fascinated by what I could feel, see, the shifts, and the deep correspondences. I particularly liked being a stranger there, and the freedom it gave to my eyes. I was at altitude. I would very much like to be able to use this feeling for a project, in Tokyo for example. It would be like drawing from the place of my imagination. I would also like to draw for magazines about musical, social or political subjects, in order to reflect the psychological side of my drawings.

What does a typical day in the life of Emmanuel Hyronimus look like?
For more than a year, entire peoples have been masked, confined, restricted in their most essential freedoms, having to rethink every step of their daily lives, redesigning the contours of their lives. Everyone tries to cope with constraints, obligations, calls and desires. This is exactly how I have been composing my days for several years; and adapting them to seasons of course!

What inspires you?
Generally speaking, I am inspired by everything that will make me a contemplative spectator, or an explorer of the imaginary. My background is where I sort of consciously pile up these things that impress me, but that I don’t use them right away, these things that I’m passionate about, but I don’t understand right away.... Sensations, emotions, ideas, forms, words... It’s an invisible work, of almost every moment.

What is your favorite blog or web page?
The Anonymous Project is a crazy project that brings together amateur photos from the last 70 years. A true kaleidoscope of our daily lives, these photos tell the story of ordinary lives, our own, our collective memories. It’s moving, funny, dizzying, and strangely fascinating. https://www.anonymous-project.com/