Joel Lorand

Joel Lorand is a French 'outsider' artist.  He belongs to a category of sophisticated, untrained artists who have had to develop their skills individually, without guidance from an art school.  Prior to becoming an artist, Lorand had a very successful career as a pastry chef.  He discarded that career to pursue his art, which he works on obsessively.

In his own words...

"I was born in Paris, not far from the Eiffel Tower, I don't know who my father was which perhaps explains why I have always had a certain psychological fragility and instability. Who am I? certainly someone fragile, deeply melancholic; cheerful one day dejected the next, sometimes even agressive towards people. However usually I am a pleasant enough person but somewhat anti-social when faced with too many people, when I feel ill at ease and become awkward and extremely shy. I truly believe that a superior power has given me a real force which all true artists possess, a force which can influence matter making it pass from the invisible world to the visible world. A metaphysical force between the dead and the living. It is like drug and one cannot escape unscathed.
I once asked a psychoanalyst who had bough one of my paintings if he thought that I was mad. He replied that I was not mad but that I had simply opened a door in my subconscious, perhaps the famous doors of perception? Whatever happens I shall go to the end of my quest."