KALAHEO — Casually lounging in a leather chair with his feet stretched across a wooden coffee table, Francis DuBois silently gazes out a large balcony window of his Kalaheo home. He carefully thinks about how he is going to craft
KALAHEO — Casually lounging in a leather chair with his feet stretched across a wooden coffee table, Francis DuBois silently gazes out a large balcony window of his Kalaheo home. He carefully thinks about how he is going to craft his next sentence.
“On one hand, I don’t give a damn about the art world,” DuBois says with a slight French accent. “On the other, I’m interested in people buying my creations.”
Born in Boston but raised primarily in France, DuBois doesn’t label himself as an artist — he sees himself as a human being that creates.
“Creativity is the process of what goes on in the studio between the creator and the medium,” DuBois said. “Art is the residue of that process. Art is anything that you can teach, see, hear and buy.”
For most of DuBois’ life, he resisted the notion of creating paintings solely for profit. His creations are deeply personal — a “vital energy” that he channels into a physical object.
DuBois discovered his ability to channel at the death of his father. Weeks before his father’s death, a man DuBois hardly knew, he started to paint a series of images of a man dying. The man he painted had his throat slit and jaw cut out. When DuBois finished his third painting, he received a phone call from abroad with the news his father had died from a throat condition, in which his jaw had to be cut.
“My father and I touched beyond sensory experiences.”
DuBois finds his balance in a multi-medium approach.
This ranges from drawings and paintings to sculpting and assembling installations, even drumming, dancing and singing.
Currently, three of DuBois’ pieces are on display at Art Kaua‘i 2010, an exhibit hosted by the Kaua‘i Society of Artists at Kukui Grove Center. The paintings depict DuBois’ “aching recovery” from two abdominal surgeries he recently underwent.
“They are a dried-out cry of pain of a bad couple of weeks,” DuBois said. “My goal was not to make it pretty, it was to get it out of my system.”
For his pieces, titled “The River of Pain,” “Imaginary Containment” and “A Shadow of Becoming,” DuBois received the Kaua‘i Society of Artists award for the body of the work. The State Foundation on Culture and the Arts also purchased his work for the Art in Public Places collection.
But DuBois said he couldn’t care less who bought his pieces.
“What they bought was a piece of fabric with oil pigment on top,” DuBois said.
DuBois wishes to use money he earns from his creations to open a center where children can express themselves.
He hopes to create a forum where he can “radiate, share and inspire other people.
“There are very few young artists in the show, and in KSA,” DuBois points out. “We need fresh blood. If kids want to come with graffiti, iPads or slam shows, please, let them come in expressing what is contemporary of their generation.”
Art Kaua‘i 2010 is currently on display through Oct. 28 at KSA’s gallery at Kukui Grove Center.
