Jean-Marc Laroche
Jean-Marc Laroche
I was born in Paris in 1959, and I was not exactly what you would call a good little boy. My parents loved me but were often taken aback by my practical jokes. These were not always in the best taste, my father almost had a heart attack when, at the age of 10, I pretended to be in horrible pain, my finger bloodied and pierced by an enormous fake nail. One of my practical jokes almost went very wrong due to my passion for chemistry and explosives. At age 15 an explosion in my laboratory sent me straight to the hospital, my hands with third-degree burns. Luckily, our home narrowly escaped going up in flames.
After that, I calmed down a bit, but was always inventing and tinkering with something in the garage. I completely immersed myself in Hollywood movies and comic books. I was fascinated by “Métal Hurlant”, the original French version of the “Heavy Metal Chronicles”; I was intrigued by its illustrators, such as Philippe Druillet and H.R. Giger, who opened my mind to science and fantasy fiction.
I preferred traveling to studying, and fell in love especially with Brazil and my wife, Vilma, from Rio de Janeiro.
Returning to France during the late 1980s, sculpture became my full time occupation. This quite naturally brought me to knives, as they were so much a part of the fantasy fiction I loved so much. Self taught right from the beginning, I am still teaching myself everything I need to know for creating my works of art.
From 1990 to 2002 I was a constant attendee at quite a few of the European and American knife shows. Some of my knives generated great interest with their originality and won awards, so much so that an unscrupulous manufacturer stole 6 of my models to go into mass production in China. Not wanting to get into a legal battle, I have preferred to see the matter as the cost of success.
Over the past fifteen years, I have devoted myself more to creative work on a larger scale centered on two main themes: The Human Mechanics and the Dance of Death with skeletons, each more lifelike than the other, centering around the idea that while thinking about death, we come to understand how precious life really is.
As I grow older I try more and more to combine work with pleasure. I feel good to continue living my childhood dreams and passions.
