Portraitures by Bruno Leydet
Born in 1968, Bruno Leydet is a Canadian painter who graduated from New York University and is currently based in Montreal. He is a portrait painter whose style was influenced mainly by expressionist painter Alice Neel, known for her portraits of family and friends, and the works of experimental filmmaker Kenneth Anger, whose short films merged surrealism and homoeroticism with a documentary style.
Leydet’s work features a tableaux collection centered on acrylic homoerotic portraitures, which narrate the sitters’ gay identities, surrounded by both pattern-oriented and surreal backgrounds. The inspiration for a work comes to Leydet from a pattern he finds, a historic painting, the model himself, or even a film he has seen. His 
male figures, even those appearing in groups, are often displayed with contemplative expressions or with a sense of melancholy amid their exotic surroundings .
“In the case of “Toile de Jouy Dream,” the painting started with Samuel. He had posed for another painting and had told me that he had this suit made with a toile de Jouy pattern. I knew I had to do a painting of him wearing it. Then almost two years passed, and I had this dream – I often have these weird dreams of these strange landscapes and places in crazy Technicolor, or great big old houses filled with objects. In this dream, I saw a prairie with a row of odd-looking houses, with huge storks made of green tiles in front. And then I thought of putting Samuel in that place, and using the greens and blues to give it this unreal night-time feel and add depth to the surroundings.”
– Bruno Leydet, June 2017
Bruno Leydet is represented by Craven Contemporary for Europe and the United States. The artist’s site is : https://www.instagram.com/brunoleydetmtl/?hl=en
My thanks to https://doctordee.tumblr.com
super-duper find. thanks.