°1960 – Ghent
Selfmade painter
A look into the artist’s soul
Ramont was three years old when his parents moved to Ostend. This proximity of the sea would become vital for his life and of central importance in his work.
The sea, the piers, the beach and the dunes became his playground. Romping on the beach, swimming recklessly between East and West piers, fishing: the golden days of his boyhood. And drawing, already then. The urge to capture nature impressions cannot be deleted from Ramont’s memory.
Sculptor Hubert Minnebo was his secondary school teacher for plastic education. He taught him to ‘look’, without a doubt an absolute condition for a painter.
He joined the Belgian navy as a young mariner and sailed the open sea, along the European coast and through the Strait of Gibraltar. New images on his retina, new sources of inspiration. The beauty of the coasts of Normandy and Brittany has been branded on his memory for ever.
Ramont doesn’t merely aim to paint fine harbours and seascapes. His light on canvas and his palette suggest some strange magic behind reality. Ramont is fascinated by mysteries of ancient times. His dark green mossy boulders evoke the megalithes of Stonehenge and the menhirs of Brittany. The light passages on his canvases draw you into another dimension.
Also the mysterious depths of the submarine world have inspired Ramont. As a diver he explored fauna and flora deep down in exotic faraway seas.
The human figure is mostly absent in his work. He considers man as a species that pollutes and destroys nature. Ramont’s perception of nature is a solitary experience.
His great masters are Rembrandt and Vermeer. He admires the magistral use of light in their oeuvre. And in his view also Van Gogh’s world of colours is unequalled.
Ramont is an artist who feels the energy and the passion within his soul.
Gerda Bulens, 2009
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An impression by Anne-Marie POLLET (†), art historian
‘ … Ramont is an artist with an eye for structures and materials. With his sharp sense of observation he brings the diversity in our environment on canvas.
His skies are unlike other skyscapes. They are transparent and with their delicate degradation of colour they radiate quiet and meditation. His blues combined with purple, mauve, lilac, pink, red and orange are a delight for the eye. Also his dark and ominous marine paintings are attractive…’
‘… He is not only inspired by the North Sea. He also brings fantastic underwater scenes on canvas with mysterious ruins, wrecks and antique statues. On some of these paintings we find blood coral with a visible three-dimensional paint surface. Your eyes feel the deep red structure.
He is intrigued by foreign coasts with breakers dashing against the rocks… His marine paintings smell like beaches, breakwaters, shells, seaweeds. Seas can be calm, inconstant, destructive, threatening, stormy, unpredictable. Ramont is able to paint all these aspects of the sea.’
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