Meet Maxime François | Co-founder of La Maison François

We had the good fortune of connecting with Maxime François and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Maxime, what was your thought process behind starting your own business?
It is at the beginning of the year 2020, at the Hôtel de Vogüé in Dijon, Burgundy, that the first exhibition of the artist Eric François is born, carried by his wife Véronique. On this occasion, eighty-five paintings will be presented. It is the starting point of a beautiful family adventure which will be relayed and amplified by Céline, Maxime and Alexandre, their three children. It should be noted that they have been attending exhibitions and immersed in their father’s paintings since they were very young. Céline, Maxime and Alexandre explain that the artist never ceases to surprise them with the profusion of his work. The project “La Maison François” is developed in the family in the house-workshop of Dijon. The children took the initiative to become ambassadors of their father’s paintings with Alexandre, the youngest, as photographer.

“The starting point for our family project was watching our dad paint for years in his studio. We thought it was time to do something together, becoming ambassadors for his work.”

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
Today, Eric François works as a designer on projects for land development, urban sites, eco-districts, parks and historical gardens, with the leitmotiv of a reasoned use of space – sober, useful and sustainable – and a respect for Nature that rhymes with human well-being, happiness and fulfillment.

In parallel and in perfect interactivity, Eric François practices daily a very gestural painting, developing a lot of matter, depth, movement, transparency and light.

Eric François speaks of his paintings as MESSAGES in homage to our most precious common good, the Earth of our children. They evoke the beauty, the diversity, the interdependence, the fragility, of the elements and passengers of a unique and miraculous living planet.

A seeker of horizons, he draws his inspiration from the landscapes he surveys and studies every day.

He cooks his paintings to his own taste. His raw material, inexhaustible, his palette, his ingredients, are the territories and their components which fill him with wonder at every moment: light, sky, horizon, topography, hydrography, vegetal occupation of the ground, architecture, urban typologies, energy transport networks and displacements, but also the sound and olfactory landscapes, the biodiversity and of course the human beings, unique, considered individually or collectively.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
I’ll take her to The broad museum, bar joey dtla. I will also take him to visit the UCLA campus, and of course the Venice and Santa Monica area.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
Obviously, I would say my father. He is the one who started our family project. We have seen him paint since we were children. We have accompanied him in his artistic evolution
We converse daily and meets regularly to exchange, to discover in preview the evolution of the work within the studio.

Website: https://lamaisonfrancois.art

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lamaisonfrancoisofficiel/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maxime-françois98/

Image Credits
On this photo, Céline & Maxime, the cof-founders of the Maison