Draftsman and painter, Jacques Donnay is one of those privileged people who excels in both disciplines with an ease that leaves you speechless and who has been practicing for a long time already. It certainly didn't take him long to gain recognition for a pictorial art that has already earned him exhibitions all over the world, even in Paris or in the Wisconsin...

Landscape and portrait painter, he essentially stays an everyday-life captor; reflections on the Meuse, the gush of small rivers in the Ardennes; the first dews of the dawn or the abundances or the bushy trees.

Anchored in a Dalhem that remains in both his first inspiration and the modus vivendi he has chosen once and for all, he still grasps all the character and the charm of the villages from Wallonia, the surroundings of the regions of Liège or Verviers; in the heart of the Ardennes. Nature is above all, inspiring compositions that look like straight out of a movie screen.

This materialist of the poetics possesses the amazing creative power to penetrate into his paintings as if, all of a sudden, we were opening a window and get the decor in your face. Thanks to his own technique, refined over the years, he gives the impression that his vision of the universe, by involving the four seasons, the wind, the rain, the heat; takes place in front of the audience and delivers the essence of its mystery.

Not content with grasping the soul inside the landscapes, Jacques Donnay crunches with the same ease of family portraits or relatable profiles, Bruegel-style faces that are reminiscent of encounters on the Batte, which allowed him to produce, a few years ago, a real life book.

About his pictorial compositions, theatre programmes or other posters for various promotions, they take up the challenge of bringing together in a small space the totality of worlds to be discovered: an abundance of characters and perfect synthesis of the dissected theme.

Jacques Donnay remains versatile in an art he practices as a conscientious and inspired professional. Watching, for him, is a passion that the the savoir-faire of his hand renders with the same intense pleasure you have when you contemplate his work.

Text by Jean Jour, translated from French