Featured Artist: Nicolas Journoud — Figurative Painting at the Intersection of East and West
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Nicolas Journoud was born in Lyon, France, and now works between Lyon and Tokyo — a geography that shapes everything about his painting. His work occupies a specific position: rigorous European training, directed toward subjects saturated in Japanese cultural memory.
Training and Technique
Journoud holds a professional drawing degree from the École Émile Cohl in Lyon, one of France's most demanding art and design schools, known for producing technically precise practitioners rather than conceptually oriented ones. The training shows: his draughtsmanship is confident, his compositions controlled, his handling of paint deliberate.
This technical foundation gives his more experimental choices — the cultural hybridisation, the narrative ambiguity — something to push against. The paintings feel earned rather than arbitrary.
The Work: Cultural Translation as Subject
Journoud's subjects come from Japanese history and aesthetic tradition: the Yoshiwara pleasure district of Edo-period Tokyo, festival scenes, landscapes filtered through the memory of woodblock print conventions. But these are not illustrations of Japanese subjects — they're reinterpretations, seen through a French eye that has spent years looking at the same material.
The result is a productive strangeness. The paintings are unmistakably figurative, but the spatial logic is sometimes flattened in ways that echo ukiyo-e. The colour is sometimes more Matisse than Hiroshige. The figures occupy their scenes with a quietness that feels Japanese but a composition that feels European.
This is not cultural appropriation as tourism — it's the genuine work of an artist who has lived in both traditions and made something new from the collision.
Recognition
Journoud has been selected for exhibitions organised by Cultura, France's largest cultural retail chain and exhibition organiser, which curates shows across the country and regularly features established contemporary practitioners. He has developed a following among both French and Japanese collectors.
Collecting Journoud
Journoud's paintings at ART & DAY are original oil paintings on canvas or panel, each signed and accompanied by a Certificate of Authenticity. The works range from smaller studies to full-scale paintings, with prices from ¥125,000 for original works.
His paintings work well in rooms where art is the centrepiece rather than the accent — they have enough compositional complexity and narrative interest to anchor a space.