Romain Boulay is a design artist born in 1972 in Agen, in the south west of France.

From this young age and his teenage years in sub-Saharan Africa, he recalls strong images and impressions of light and movement that deeply affected him.

Whether it’s the scratch of a graphite pencil, the smooth movement of a ballpoint pen, or the flow of white ink on black paper, this self-taught artist slowly developed a personal style that has grown and evolved, being fed by his emotions and experiences.

Passionate about drawing and art, Romain Boulay decided to dedicate his energy to pyrotechnic art and started a professional career as a pyrotechnic displays designer for one of the most prestigious French companies in the business. Having set fire to the sky above many prestigious locations such as le Parc de Saint Cloud, the Saint Tropez bay, or Lake Como, he was inspired, at the same time, to explore this passion for light through drawing.

A first group exposition in 2012 entitled “Regards de Nuit” explored, through a shared vision with Thibault de Chastenet, painter and illustrator, the dreamlike and fantastical universe of the night. As a result of this successful first showing, three pieces were selected to be shown at the “salon des indépendants” in Tel Aviv in 2012.

Romain continued to explore the limitless nuances of white pigments, his preferred method of artistic expression, at the Trocadéro in Paris in 2014 with a personal exposition entitled “Mist Areas”. His drawings invited the viewer along on a journey through foggy and mysterious landscapes where light flirts with darkness, where magic and mystery are born, and where the beauty of all things is revealed.

For his third exhibition in 2016, “Spirit in the air”, he chooses an original subject: the bubble
Fleeting and dreamlike, the bubble evokes many symbols in its ascendant sphere. Sometimes protector of a closed world, sometimes festive, the light and impalpable bubble is also a metaphor that faces both the fragility and futility of life, almost as a vanity ...
Buddhism teaches us to consider life as we would a bubble, a fleeting impermanence in the manifested world.

First raised on a black background in its delicate luminosity, the bubble is like an obvious subject in Romain Boulay’s art and “Spirit in the air” attempts to lift the veil from the different universes.