For as long as I can remember, I wanted to become an artist.
As a child, I spent many summers in the South of France visiting my grandmother, who was an artist herself. She would hand my sisters and me a piece of paper and simply tell us to “go draw the garden.”
I kept that habit with me as I grew up. I would draw in the margins of my school books, fill pages with faces and small details I noticed around me, and spend hours drawing alone in my room before dinner.
Without realizing it at the time, drawing had already become my way of observing the world and of holding onto moments.
Becoming an artist was always the dream. But as I grew older, a more traditional and secure path was chosen for me. I studied business and marketing, and little by little, drawing became less present in my everyday life.
Still, the idea of becoming an artist never really disappeared. It remained somewhere in the back of my mind distant at times, but always there.
In 2019, after graduating, I moved across the Atlantic to Montreal and began a career in product marketing. For several years, I built a life that seemed very different from the one I had imagined as a child.
But eventually, I found my way back to drawing.
MONTREAL
In November 2023, after years away from drawing, I picked up a pencil again.
It immediately felt familiar.
There was something almost strange about rediscovering a part of myself that had been left untouched for so long. My technique had barely evolved since my teenage years, but the desire to learn had returned completely.
So, in 2024, I gave myself a challenge: complete one drawing every month and see how far I could push my technique towards hyperrealism.
The drawings gradually became larger, slower and more detailed. I studied textures, skin, light and shadow, constantly trying to understand how a simple surface could create the illusion of something real.
What began as a personal challenge eventually became something much more important: a way back to the artistic life I had imagined when I was younger.
In June 2025, after six years in Canada, I returned to France.
For almost a year, I barely drew. It wasn’t until I arrived in the South of France in May 2026 that something changed. I found myself surrounded by landscapes, light and details that made me want to create again.
The Mediterranean, quiet streets leading to the sea, afternoon light passing through leaves, gardens, wet hair after swimming and long summer days suddenly became subjects I wanted to capture.
In many ways, returning South also meant returning to where my relationship with drawing had first begun.
At the same time, my technique was evolving. After working primarily with graphite during my years in Canada, I gradually turned to charcoal, which has now become my main medium.
I was drawn to its depth and intensity, but also to the freedom it gave me to move between extremely precise details and softer, blurred areas. Working exclusively in black and white allowed me to focus on what interested me most: light, texture, contrast and atmosphere.
The South gave me a new story to tell. Charcoal became the way I wanted to tell it.
THE STORY
Le temps d’un été is my current collection, inspired by my life in the South of France and the moments I want to remember.
Each drawing begins with a photograph I have taken a place, a person, a detail or simply a moment that caught my attention.
Through hyperrealism, I try to preserve the feeling of that instant rather than simply reproduce the photograph. I particularly enjoy playing with focus, allowing some areas to remain soft or blurred while others are drawn with extreme precision.
The collection is about the beauty I find in ordinary moments: the first swim of summer, sunlight touching the skin, a quiet garden at the end of the afternoon, the walk back from the beach.
Together, the drawings form a visual journal of my life in the South, fragments of places, people and moments that have become part of my own story.
Moments captured before they pass.
This is only the beginning.
There are still many ideas I want to explore, new collections I want to create and projects I hope to bring to life. I want to work on larger pieces, continue pushing my technique and see how far I can take charcoal and hyperrealism.
More than anything, I want to build a lasting career in art, one that allows me to keep creating, exhibiting my work and sharing these fragments of my life with others.
The dream of becoming an artist has been with me for as long as I can remember.
Today, I finally get to see where it can take me.
For any inquiries, you can email me at marchalxstudio@gmail.com.
To learn more about my creative process, you can follow me on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest and Tiktok @marchalstudio for more content and creative process