About the Artist
Wet collodion by Psyché Ophiuchus
In Yoann Lossel's work, light rises from within the image. Gold, laid leaf by leaf over ink, watercolor, graphite, sometimes tea or coffee, draws dawns and twilights up from the surface of the paper. The technique was born of an accident: stray flakes of gold settling on a drawing, one day of experiments, which he chose to keep. He made them into a language.
That language comes from far back. From a childhood in Nantes, between a schoolteacher father who lived among books and a Beaux-Arts-trained mother who kept every art form within reach. From volumes of Tolkien illustrated by Alan Lee, opened too young or exactly on time. From a hike, at fifteen, into the forest of Brocéliande he never quite left: he lives and works there today. In between, three years of narrative drawing at the École Pivaut, a spell in illustration, then a turning: make everything himself, and make it by hand.
Books :
2021: "Forgotten Gods - The Art of Yoann Lossel", Artbook
2017: "Beowulf", Easton Press -
Deluxe Edition limited to 1.200 copies
Publications and Awards :
Art Renewal Center: issues 10, 13, 14
- 2019, issue 14:
Dual category award
- 2018, issue 13:
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First Place / Drawing
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ARC Purchase Awards
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Arcadia Contemporary Award
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Aristides Publication Prize for Drawing
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Second Place / Imaginative Realism
- 2014, issue 10:
Honorable Mention, Drawing Category
Infected by Art: issues 3, 4, 6, 8 ,9:
- 2019, issue 8:
Second place grand prize,
Gold in Pen/Ink/Pencil Category
Honorable Mention in Pen/Ink/Pencil Category
- 2017, issue 6:
First place grand prize winner,
Gold in Pen/Ink/Pencil Category
"Body of Work Winner's Portfolio"
- 2015, issue 4:
Bronze in Oil/Acrylic/Watercolor Category
- 2014, issue 3:
Third place grand prize
Gold in Oil/Acrylic/Watercolor Category
Argent in Pen/Ink/Pencil Category
"Body of Work Winner's Portfolio".
Spectrum: issues 20, 21 ,22 ,23 , 25, 26:
-2018, issue 25: Finalist in the editorial category
- 2015, issue 23: Nominated for the "Rising Star" award
- 2013, issue 21: Title page of the issue 21
- 2012, issue 20: Front cover of the issue 20
(case front cover of the hardcover)
Participation in Shows:
Norman Rockwell Museum, Stockbridge (USA) - 2021
Modern Eden Gallery, San Francisco (USA) - 2020
Arcadia Contemporary, Pasadena, CA (USA) - 2019
Sotheby's, Los Angeles (USA) - 2018
Salmagundi Club, New York, NY (USA) - 2018
Haven Gallery, Northport, NY (USA) - 2018
Century Guild, Culver City, CA (USA) - 2013
Nucleus gallery, Alhambra, CA (USA) - 2013
Krab Jab Studio, Seattle, WA (USA) - 2013, 2014, 2015, 2017
Society of Illustrators, New York, NY (USA) - 2014
Also in :
Exeter (UK),Paris (France, Galerie "Les Petits Papiers"), Rennes (France), Brocéliande (France), Le Mans (France), Melbourne (Australia), Arlon (Belgium)...
Press:
- 2021, volume 18, issue 3
- 2021, issue 57
- 2019, issue 47
Beautiful Bizarre Magazine:
- 2019, issue 027
- 2018, issue 162
- 2015, issue 126 & How to Paint and Draw
His studio is the kind William Morris argued for. There he paints and draws in mixed media, oil, watercolor, inks, pencils, almost always heightened with gold. There he built his own press, prints, gilds, and makes books alongside photographer Psyché Ophiuchus, his partner in work and in life. Forgotten Gods (2021), funded by his readers and prefaced by Alan Lee, the circle closed, also exists as a fully handmade edition, silkscreened in gold in the studio and bound by one of France's finest master bookbinders. His images have traveled from American galleries to the Norman Rockwell Museum and the Félicien Rops Museum. In 2025, France's metal awards Les Foudres named his cover for Alcest's Les Chants de l'Aurore artwork of the year; he co-directed the album's animated film, a bird puppet completed from one solstice to the next.
He walks in Morris's footsteps, but reads him through Walter Benjamin: the past is a reserve of forms waiting to be awakened in the present.
That work now has a horizon: Labyrinth. A world-work in progress, a fragmentary narrative built to be wandered like the place it is named after. The book will be only its threshold. The first pieces are already surfacing. The rest waits in the dark, gilt-edged.
