Three questions to Pierre Freneau
About Pierre Freneau
Pierre Freneau is a French painter, born in 1997 and based in Paris. His work navigates the intersection of daily encounters, human emotions, and surreal imagination, blending spontaneous visions, keen observations, and instinctive responses to create immersive, dreamlike atmospheres. Through this approach, he transforms introspective reflections into vivid visual experiences.
His art is a fusion of real-life moments and abstract compositions, shaped by a continuous absorption of emotions, situations, and encounters that define everyday existence.
Inspired by the surrealist and symbolist movements, his works often feature neutral faces, fragmented body parts, and geometric forms placed in unexpected contexts. These elements serve as powerful symbols, arranged to create metaphorical narratives that invite viewers to engage in personal introspection and connect with their own experiences.
Each piece becomes a dialogue between the visible and the invisible, the symbolic and the rational, urging the viewer to explore the limits of perception and emotion.
Could you tell us more about your background and what led you to become an artist?
I actually come from a scientific background, with an education in materials science and metallurgical engineering, and don’t have any formal art training. This technical mindset has an interesting influence on my approach to painting. I’m naturally drawn to exploring light, perspective, and details with a methodical approach. This includes experimenting with techniques to shape a clear visual idea I have in my mind as accurately as possible on the canvas.
From a very young age, I’ve always been deeply sensitive to the world around me, both in terms of emotions and aesthetic elements like natural patterns, unusual designs, strong symbols, etc. Discovering painting in my early twenties quickly became a way to translate this sensitivity into something tangible. It allowed me to capture the way I see and feel things, blending the rational and the emotional. My scientific perspective helps me understand and depict physical elements and scenes, while my emotional vision lets me interpret them through symbols tied together in surreal compositions.
Your work is rooted in introspective reflections. What are the main questions that bother you most at the moment?
Yes, my art is deeply rooted in introspective reflections, both on a personal level and in seeking a connection with the viewer’s perception of symbols and how they relate to their own sensitivity. I often work in a way that resembles automatic writing, letting my subconscious guide the composition without consciously seeking answers. I arrange symbols and elements instinctively, trusting that the connections my mind creates hold meaning, even if I can sometimes only fully understand them afterward.
Currently, my main focus is on exploring how we perceive identity and emotions, and how these perceptions shape our behavior, whether in personal relationships or within a collective environment. I am fascinated by questions surrounding my generation’s ideals about accomplishment, legacy, and alternative visions of society. These reflections come both from personal introspection and from interpreting daily scenes, where the surrealistic approach allows me to transform emotions into material symbols.
What comes first: concept or technique?
For me, the concept always comes first. It’s the initial vision, the mental image of the piece, where I see the atmosphere, the emotion, the composition, symbols, etc. all coming together. This vision is what shapes the idea of the artwork before I even begin thinking about the technique. It’s an instinctive moment when everything clicks and assembles together.
The technique becomes the means to bring it to life on the canvas, a set of tools that helps me translate that vision as accurately as possible, without deviating from the image I have in my mind. While the concept is guiding, the technique is essential to allowing me to reproduce this mental image on the canvas, but the core idea always comes first in my work.
Our top selection of Pierre's works
