About the Artist
Probably better known to the general public as Daytime television's Kirk Mc Coll from As the World Turns or the despicable lawyer Michael Baldwin, on The Young and the Restless, Christian Jules Le Blanc is also a native of Louisiana and quite an accomplished artist.
Self-taught, originally Le Blanc's illustrations started as gifts for his young nephews. His artwork soon dovetailed nicely with his acting career when he received a commission for the premier theatrical production of Miami's Coconut Grove Theater's 40th anniversary season. The producers requested that he transmogrify the human characters of the play, in which Le Blanc was starring with Julie Harris, Ladies In Retirement, into the animal characters Le Blanc had been developing for children's books. The drawings follow the course of the old Victorian whodunit, incorporating the clues of the murder mystery along the way.
His pieces: Home, Making Market, 5 o’clock at the 9 o’clock Cannon, La Chanson du Coq Noir, and La Premier Adieu take from his own children’s novel in progress, Tales of the Louisiana Moon. These works combine an authentic early New Orleans environment with a high color fantasy that periodically is peopled by Le Blanc’s fellow Y&R cast members.
Le Blanc’s 1999 Orpheus Mardi Gras Poster was inspired by Le Blanc’s reintroduction to Mardi Gras in 1998 as an Orpheus celebrity monarch. Commissioned by the parade’s founders, Harry Connick, Soney Borey, and Anne Rice, that year’s parade theme was “World Premiers at the Old French Opera House.”
Le Blanc’s current show, “WET,” marks a departure from his previous exhibitions. This series began as a one-off study of light and texture. With the encouragement of fellow artists, Mattea Perrotta, Alex Beard, and especially Kevin Gillentine eventually became the nature studies that make up this collection.
"se promenader dans un temps de peste" COMING SPRING 2023
"Et In Arcadia Ego" colored pencil on paper 22" x 30"
