Exhibitions resume at Galerie HVL 

We look forward to seeing you at the vernissage of Marc Jortay, painter, on Friday 15 September from 6pm. 

 Autobiography of the artist :

My career began when, at the age of 4, the teacher at the Boulevards nursery school in Verviers informed my parents that it was impossible for me to reproduce an identical drawing.
In 1955, speech therapists didn't go round schools looking for 'dys'-something. This was even more pronounced when, asked to write my first name, I transcribed it as CRAM.
From then on, my mother called me Cram instead of Marc.
I was dyslexic and visually left-handed. The problem was compounded when it extended to all forms of reasoning.

Rather than writing, my apprenticeship began with drawing lessons. After that, my school career was rather chaotic until the end of secondary school. In the meantime, I had spent a good deal of my spare time as a child and teenager with my paternal grandfather, Ernest Jortay, a carpenter and head set designer at the Grand Théâtre in Verviers.
Practising carpentry and the art of working with wood have added to my wonder at creation, whatever it may be.
At the age of 12, I also took up photography, where the physical principles of optics were particularly relevant to me, as I was constantly having to juggle with my camera.
inverted images.
At 16, my mind was made up: I was going to be an architect. My father, a wool-maker, travelled a lot. He spoke 4 languages and his travel stories and the images he brought back captivated me. So I thought I'd spend a year travelling before my higher education, but when I came face to face with the school authorities, I made the right decision: after sitting and passing the entrance exam, I was admitted to the Antwerp Maritime Academy as a deck officer on long voyages.
So in 1970, I travelled around the world and was able to explore it on my own, without any preconceptions.
In 1971, after passing the entrance exam, I was admitted to the first year of architecture at the Institut Saint-Luc in Liège.
From the very first year, I knew I hadn't made a mistake. During the first three years, I developed a taste for painting thanks to a teacher, André Blank, a painter from Raeren.
However, I didn't start painting until the 80s and 90s.
I finished my architecture studies at La Cambre in Brussels in 1977.
I completed my training with a postgraduate degree in town and country planning at ULB.
From 1977 onwards, together with my wife Isabelle Noël, a landscape architect, I devoted myself entirely to developing my architectural practice, which over time became AUPa sprl: Architectes, Urbanistes, Paysagistes associés.
In 2016, the company had 20 employees and partners and I concluded a management buy-out with 4 of them.
In 2018, I stepped down as president of the Belgian Chamber of Urban Planners.

Throughout these years, I continued to paint and photograph, in short to create, in my spare time. These two activities became as necessary to me as bread and water.
This background and all the experiences and journeys that have followed have been a source of inspiration for me, and have even changed the way I work.

When it comes to painting, I've decided not to draw any more, but to work with colours and materials using tools other than brushes.
Ambiences and contexts, two decisive elements for architects and town planners, structure a body of work that is not intended to be figurative. The history and evolution of built-up areas, towns and countryside, underlie my pictorial work.
I've decided to keep an open mind to everything, with no preconceptions, otherwise I'll be restricting my inspiration unnecessarily.

"You are not the things you do,
You are the way you are.
- Neale Walsh