FrenchEntrée Magazine · Hérault · January / February 2015
FrenchEntrée Magazine — “Life’s a Doodle”
In 2015, journalist Sylvia Davis visited the story of how an illustrator who had worked in California ended up building a studio and a very different daily life in the Hérault, in the south of France.
From California to the Hérault
The article looks back at my move from Santa Monica, California, where I had worked as an illustrator and designer during the early internet years, to the countryside north of Montpellier.
I settled in the Hérault in 2006. The change was considerable: from Los Angeles traffic and a dense professional environment to vineyards, garrigue, small villages and the landscape around the Pic Saint-Loup.
What did not change was the work. Illustration, cartooning, design and animation could travel with me, and most of my clients were already elsewhere.
A studio in a wine village
One of the pleasures of the FrenchEntrée interview is that it did not stay entirely with career milestones. Sylvia Davis was also interested in the practical and occasionally absurd details of moving a working studio into rural France.
On the day I moved into the house, for example, every room appeared to have an internet socket. The only problem was that the house itself had never actually been connected to the internet.
There was also my introduction to local wine culture: being invited to judge a carthagène competition at the village fête without quite understanding that professional tasting normally involves spitting the wine out again.
Those small encounters probably describe the move better than any grand statement about changing countries. Working internationally continued; daily life simply acquired a rather different backdrop.
The landscape around Montpellier
The article also reflects something that has become more visible in my work over the years: the influence of the place itself.
The vineyards, limestone hills, villages and Mediterranean light of the Pic Saint-Loup region have gradually become subjects as well as surroundings. They now appear in personal illustrations, posters, local characters and commissioned projects for businesses and producers in the area.
That connection developed naturally. After living and working here for many years, the landscape stops being scenery and becomes part of the visual vocabulary.
Work discussed in the interview
The FrenchEntrée feature touched on several parts of my work before and after the move to France, including:
- the early Google Doodles and my work with Google around 2000
- illustration and design for international clients
- editorial cartoons and magazine illustration
- character design and visual storytelling
- animation and illustrated video projects produced from a studio in the Hérault
Some of those areas have changed considerably since 2015, particularly animation and digital production. Drawing, however, remains at the centre of the work.
More than a decade later
The interview appeared in 2015. I still live and work in the same part of the Hérault, today from my studio in Claret, between Montpellier and the wider Pic Saint-Loup landscape.
The studio continues to handle international illustration and visual communication projects, while an increasing part of my work is also connected directly to the region: wine labels, packaging, posters, local characters, cultural projects and visual identities.
Illustration & création visuelle autour de Montpellier
Pour découvrir mon travail actuel dans l’Hérault :
Graphiste & illustrateur à Montpellier, Claret et Pic Saint-Loup →
Illustration, bande dessinée & narration visuelle à Montpellier →
