It's really worth knowing the grand,mysterious,surprising site of BRAMABIAU in the GARD County part of the CEVENNES Mountains, where a river,the BONHEUR,suddenly disappears underground to reappea in booming cascades several miles away...

A century ago,E.A MARTEL succeeded in exploring the strea from start to finish,along its subterranean course,thus inaugurating there the era of modern speleology:The cave was now part of the legend of bold explorations realized with makeshift equipment.Nowadays it is perfectly and cleverly organized to allow the visit,by tourist of its downstream part.

After the sky and the verdant forests of Mont AIGOUAL,it's time to walk into Earthls secrets,through that trobbing chasm,that strange gash across the cliff.There,along Overhanging paths and brid ges,along galleries,the visitorls steps lead him back intc, time,with this fugitive river explored in full activity!A lesson in geology! The waterls works,the resistance and cracks of the stone,in vivo,wit the slow progression of centuries and the brutal power of the moment.

This is the very special place Jean TRUEL selected,with the agre ment of Robert PASSET -the owner and manager who prepared the cave- to join closely his impulse as a painter to Nature's fancy,to be on familiar terms with this living nature and together with it,to let his creation spring in the very place where it lives,flows,digs,creates.

But such relations are not born of chance or fancy!They ar induced by the long subterranean ways of a speleologist and a painte at onc?e,who has taken his easel down the most prestigious abysses in the world,who has gorgeously rendered the cascades of BRAMABIAU in a sober symphony of ocre and blue hues.

It's already a long time since Jean TRUEL translated onto painted canvas,his feelings as a speleologist,progressively rediscovering a subterranean inventiveness in which the energy of the water faces the structural opposition of the chalky rocks.

And one could feel his desire of breaking through the canvas,as some others step trhough looking glasses ... He thus created at REGAGNAS,on the LARZAC chalky plateau,a vast painted space on which the erosion of time acted with colours and material elements.He SOME times enjoyed inserting,in his paintings,some fragments of those material elements eroded by nature and enhanced by his rich hues.

And so on to the day when the model changed into pictural object,living matter and not I"still life".He then selected,in the underground river of BRAMABIAU,with every discretion necessary to such ar approach,convenient volumes to help re-inventing his painting:He underlines reliefs,he follows outlines,he forces his paint to follow i ancient ways of waterdrops,he recreates chasms and cascades.

And the visitorls eye shares in this adventure by choosing to select different angles of vision in this tridimensional paintini What is real,what is imaginary? ... Only great creators and gods are able to carry us out,far beyond those differences ...