About

I was born in 1930 in Croydon, Surrey, of a French father and an English mother. I have been lucky to enjoy a full-time professional painting career for 35 years.

I had no formal art training but studied 'The Greats' in London, Paris, Venice etc. in galleries and museums.

When I was 40, I had my first painting accepted at The Royal Academy Summer Exhibition. It sold at preview and The Trafford Gallery, Mount Street, London, offered to show my work. Two years later they gave me a one-man show and four paintings were bought by a rich American entrepreneur, Mr Hank Ginsberg. His wife ran an Interior Design Consultancy and wanted more of my works to place in the homes of other Americans living in London. They gave me a two year contract to paint 72 pictures; some to go into their own homes and galleries in the USA and some to clients. However, I shall never forget my first visit to their penthouse apartment in Curzon Lodge; I saw four of my paintings hanging with works by Renoir, Vlamink, Degas and Rodin! I can still hardly believe it; and I cannot imagine that they could still be in such august company!

I continued to show at the Trafford and later with the Madden Gallery, just off Grosvenor Square and at The Business Art Gallery, Burlington House, Piccadily. I also had  exhibitions in many other galleries throughout the country. Thus I was able to establish a painting career.

I am an oil colour painter of churches, cathedrals, castles, landscapes, near-abstracts and the sea. I particularly enjoy working in France and Venice as well as this country.

TECHNIQUE

On my return from Venice, or any other venue, I prepare my finished paintings in the studio.  I work from drawings, digital photographs, oil sketches, from imagination and from recollection.  Figures and other added features are nearly always introduced from imagination as I can usually achieve more life that way.

I use many transparent glazes - thin coats of colour in special glazing medium.  This can give a translucent glow and softness to a work.  There is a constant interplay between white and light toned underpainting; over which rich transparent colour is glazed, and then maybe I'll do some scumbling (usually 'scrubbing" opaque lights over glazed darks).  The underpainting and scumbling gives body and texture, ready for further glazes.

I find the solitude of my studio, set among fields as it is, a stimulation by contrast with the Venice throng of my mind, or the grandure and magic of a cathedral facade, or the remembered sound of the Sea

"Lacoux has gradually evolved a technique of glazes in oils
and achieves an exquisite surface, shell-like and opalescent"     Arts Review