Romain Demongivert

Romain Demongivert | Attrape RêVe | 2025

Your work often feels like a quiet moment suspended between reality and a dream. How do you usually begin a new piece – with a memory, a feeling, or an image?

Since I live with aphantasia, my process differs from many artists who visualize a clear image before they begin. Because I cannot ‘see’ internally, I rely on my other senses—and above all, my emotions. My starting point is often a fleeting feeling or a simple word that resonates within me. This is actually why most of my pieces have one-word titles: a single word is enough to encapsulate the emotional essence I seek to translate onto paper.

Romain Demongivert | Géode | 2025

Studio Ghibli is often mentioned as an influence in your practice. What aspects of its storytelling or visual language resonate with you most deeply?

I grew up immersed in the Ghibli universe thanks to my parents. What deeply moves me is their contemplative approach: the ability to suspend time through music, composition, and magnified scenes of daily life. Films like Arrietty, Kiki’s Delivery Service, and Castle in the Sky left a lasting mark on me with their blend of reality and fantasy. They use the magical as a metaphor for life’s milestones. My ambition is to create images that are just as beautiful, profound, and meaningful in my own way.

Romain Demongivert | Baignade | 2024

You work primarily with gouache on paper. What does this medium allow you to express that digital or other traditional media cannot?

After exploring Posca markers and digital illustration, I turned to gouache for its relationship with the unpredictable. I love navigating that tension between technical control and the ‘letting go’ that traditional media demands. Gouache allows me to achieve highly saturated, vibrant flat tones that are essential to my creative process. This organic texture and depth of color give my work a dreamlike yet tangible quality that I cannot find anywhere else.

Many of your characters appear introspective, resting, or absorbed in their inner worlds. What draws you to these intimate, quiet moments?

I see my illustrations as frozen moments, parentheses outside of time. I want the viewer to feel as though they are holding this fragile scene in the palm of their hands. By depicting characters absorbed in their inner worlds, I invite the observer to sit beside them and experience a quiet moment, often tinged with a gentle melancholy. It is an invitation to empathy and a pause in a world that moves too fast.

Romain Demongivert | Bouquet | 2024

Your universes often blend everyday objects with fantastical elements. How important is daily life as a starting point for your imagination?

Reimagining a common object outside of its primary function is my way of re-enchanting reality. In an era saturated with anxiety-inducing information, I believe it is vital to allow ourselves to dream. Finding magic in everyday objects isn’t an escape from reality, but a way to make it gentler. This need for poetry and breathing space is what I aim to share through my blending of the ordinary and the imaginary.

You describe your practice as a bridge between the tangible world and the subconscious. How do you know when a piece has reached that balance?

There is no set rule; it’s purely intuitive. It’s a feeling that emerges while I’m painting. I sometimes set sketches aside for months because I feel a ‘key’ or an emotion is missing, without being able to explain why. I have to wait until my own state of mind is in sync with the piece to be able to finish it and find that exact balance between the tangible world and the subconscious.

Romain Demongivert | Café | 2025

What do you hope viewers feel or carry with them after encountering your work?

I first hope to captivate them with the brilliance of the colors, like a call to step closer. Once that connection is established, I want them to make the image their own through the lens of their own life stories. For me, drawing is about freezing a personal emotion on paper, but the work only truly comes alive when it resonates with someone else. What moves me most is discovering how my own silences and dreams manage to speak to the intimate histories of others.