Godon, in a few words…
We will always be amazed at those children who were able to overcome huge obstacles and rebuild themselves to live a man’s life, wrote Cyrulnik. Out of this reconstruction can emerge an artist with a different perspective on the world of normal emotions, on everyday life, on the being plunged into urbanity. This reconstruction took time for young Godon. It was completed through an encounter. An encounter with a woman, a woman he has now married, the way you marry obviousness. The obviousness of finally accepting himself. For the murky paths he had taken made a spiritual awakening more desirable and the need for an ideal more stubborn: to paint, to live painting, to live from his painting. That was in 1993, he was 29 years old. And we’re off.
While he was already recognized as a visionary that year, it would take him two more years of relentless work to forge, brush stroke by brush stroke, a style and technique that would result in his first big show in Le Touquet in 1996. Relentless when it comes to work, he is also a perfectionist with regards to formalism. Thus, to this day and beginning in 1996, dozens of exhibitions in prestigious galleries in Lille, Paris, Amsterdam, Denver and New York have been devoted to him. Museums opened their doors to him as well, and books on his work followed, one after the other…
The first exhibit in 1994 at the Palais de l’Europe in Le Touquet, a resort town in the north of France, was attended by the vacationing Parisian bourgeoisie. He rented out the space for one day, and showed 26 works. Not one of them went back home to the workshop. And a stroke of luck: at that same exhibition he made an emotional impact on a renowned art dealer. That dealer opened the door for him. He rushed right in, he was trusting and this trust was mutual; a great foothold on which to establish himself in this reconstruction.
But what on earth were Godon’s brushes doing to draw such a destiny for him? They cast a good coat of humor, without doubt, but the brushes’ hair seems to have been united by his tenderness and his talent.