Born in Avignon, a city contained within the Provencal region of southern France, Pascal Bouterin grew up in the Quartier du Grès of St. Rémy de Provence. Legendary for its scents, colours and way of life, Provencal France has drawn artists from across the globe throughout history. In his paintings, Bouterin captures the substance sustaining his regions' land and culture, conveying this sensibility in his every work, whether painting Provence, Bretagne, Nice, Venice, Africa, or New York. Through a process of application, removal and re-application, Bouterin molds the surface of his painting, searching for the delicate harmony between texture, form and color. Using an assortment of tools such as a palette knife, brush, sandpaper and painters' cloth as well as mediums of oil, graphite stick and oil pastel, Pascal applies, scrapes, carves, smudges and smoothes the surface, continuing this skillful and artful management of the plane until he is able to achieve the intensity and correlation he desires. Through his focus on texture and color above representation Bouterin is able to visually capture a genuine aesthetic feeling, one that radiates from his every work. Although his pictorial approach, consistency of design and refined style are an unmistakable mark of his hand, Bouterin has also been very much inspired by two artists. His knack for portraying the most fleeting, evanescent atmospheric effects in oil with a lightness and fluency usually reserved for watercolors is reflective of his early inspiration, J.M.W. Turner. In addition to the influence of Turner, the work and theory of the contemporary French painter, draughtsman and printmaker of Chinese birth, Zao Wou-Ki, have made a strong impression on Bouterin and can be seen in Bouterin's use of intricate textures. Over the past 12 years, Bouterin has developed a superb example of contemporary painting. A self-taught artist and jazz musician, Bouterin's work is his testimony. His adroitness, confidence and charismatic personality have resulted in well over a hundred French exhibitions, a list which includes almost every city in France. He has also exhibited in New York, Madrid, Barcelona, Bastogne, Geneva and Atlanta. Recently, the overwhelming success of his work in Atlanta and Dallas/Fort Worth has motivated Bouterin to expand further in the United States. He continues to travel, unearthing the inspiration he needs to continue his evolution of palette and form.