Jacques Charoux is a multidisciplinary artist and educator who developed an interest in art from an early age. He attended a Catholic school in Mauritius at which one of the brothers encouraged him and his classmates to draw. The brother submitted their work to an international drawing competition in New Delhi, which Jacques subsequently won. His mother encouraged him to continue working on his art, and in 1958 he won first prize at the Rose Hill Council’s ‘Concours d’Art’. The reward consisted of three years of life drawing classes at Serge Constantin’s studio, located above the Plaza Theatre in Rose Hill, and which was just about the only art school in Mauritius at the time. Jacques later joined “Action,” a local newspaper, for whom he took photographs and did the occasional interview. Alongside this, he continued to exhibit and sell his own work. He and his architect brother frequented a group of Mauritian artists and writers including Malcolm de Chazal, Raymonde de Kervern, Marcel Cabon and Robert-Edward Hart. Jacques left Mauritius for England in 1961 and obtained a diploma from the Central School of Art in 1964. He then received a grant for a postgraduate diploma at the École Nationale des Arts Brussels, better known as ‘La Cambre’. At the end of 1965, the British Council sponsored a show of Jacques’ etchings in Brussels’ Théâtre National. The etchings were then exhibited at the Decenter Gallery in Glumso, Denmark. Jacques’ thematic approach ranges from the autobiographical to the universal and the relationship between the two. “I work in painting, drawing, print-making, sculpture and photography/video. More precisely: synthetic polymer or oil paint, and more recently encaustic on canvas, drawing with wax crayon, pen and ink, color pencils, charcoal on handmade paper.” Jacques’ work has also featured the Coco de Mer as a recurrent theme, and plays with symbolism and abstraction. His first series on the Coco de Mer was titled ‘Preliminary Research for a Self-Generated Seed of Being’, and consisted of prints, drawings and paintings.