HOME DESIGN : Ex-Political Cartoonist Bent on Adventure

Jean-Pol d. Franqueuil, who was a political cartoonist in France in a previous life, asked 6-year-old Rebecca Nguyen of Fountain Valley what she would like him to paint on her bedroom walls.

Her mother, June, had commissioned a mural that would cover all four walls, and Rebecca was calling the shots.

The artist, a Huntington Beach resident whose caricatures of world leaders have appeared in the International Herald Tribune, the New York Times, the Washington Post and U.S. News and World Report, listened intently as Rebecca said: “I want a jungle scene--and I don’t want it to be boring!”

It’s not.

Rebecca and her year-old brother, Matthew, now awaken each morning in a room covered with images of a tiger feeding ice cream to a hippopotamus, monkeys swinging from trees and an elephant carrying a balloon. There’s also a farm scene with a cow sipping a glass of milk, a singing goat and a pig in a pumpkin patch.

Franqueuil smiles when asked about his leap from drawing politicians for an international audience to painting animals on bedroom walls.

As a cartoonist who worked briefly in Canada and Japan but made his name in Paris, he saw the world political scene as “a big theater, a show. And I found the same funny things everywhere--the same kind of politicians trying to get to power,” he says. What he’s doing now, he adds, “is just another kind of show”--one that’s bringing him a growing audience in Orange County.

Murals he’s painted in public places--including the Olga for Kids clothing store in Newport Beach and Puccini Ristorante in Santa Ana--have stimulated the demand for his art in private places.

His beach scene at Olga for Kids caught June Nguyen’s eye, and she liked the one he did for her store, Kidding Time in Westminster, so much that she offered him $3,500 to paint her children’s room.

Sami Kanawati, owner of Cliche Boutique in Huntington Harbour, commissioned Franqueuil to paint abstract floral designs on his shop’s walls and ceiling, then asked for a piece for his Huntington Beach home.

Returning to a favorite theme, Franqueuil painted a beach scene dominated by a bold blue sky. But he wasn’t satisfied when he placed the painting on Kanawati’s stark white living room wall. As he studied it, he saw the canvas not as a boundary setting limits but as a base on which to build. And he impulsively began expanding the scene on the wall itself.

Kanawati is delighted with the results.

“It’s both abstract and realistic. When the painting goes onto the wall, it’s like it’s entering the twilight zone,” he says.

Franqueuil is as spontaneous in life as he is in his art. He came to Southern California from Paris three years ago for a two-week vacation--and never went back.

The 34-year-old, self-taught artist--who was born in Paris but raised in Africa where his father’s government post exposed him to politics early--left behind a career in which he had begun to feel stifled by his own success.

“Working for newspapers, you always have deadlines,” he explains in a pronounced French accent. “It takes so much time and energy that you aren’t open for anything else.

“I made a good living; I had a very comfortable life. But I had to leave that world. I had a lot of ideas, but I never did anything with them. Sometimes to start something, you have to put yourself in danger.”

His new freedom in this country took him in unexpected directions.

He designed his own line of contemporary clothing (which never reached the market), started a series of celebrity caricatures (Sylvester Stallone, Eddie Murphy, Woody Allen) that he hopes to someday publish in a book, and drew caricatures of George Bush, Dan Quayle and Mikhail S. Gorbachev for a line of watches that will soon be sold through a mail-order business.

He also began painting on large canvases--works that have a photographic realism in spite of his love for Impressionism. He sold two of his oil paintings at an exhibit last year at the Beverly Hills Hotel--one for $5,600, the other for $3,500--and he plans to make his work more widely available by producing lithographs and serigraphs.

While his paintings are pure Jean-Pol, his murals are a reflection of the people who commission his work as well as his own style.

In his choice of colors and subjects, he aims for harmony with the tastes and personalities of homeowners as well as the furniture and design of a room, he says. He recently spent a day getting acquainted with the Newport Beach residents for whom he is doing a family portrait and a large mural--a $10,000 project. The mural, which will be painted on canvas and stapled to the wall, is being custom-made for a child who asked him to include a carousel, her dog and her favorite toys.

Franqueuil tries to look at such work through a child’s eyes, which is easy for a man who admits that one of his main ambitions in life is having fun.

“Everybody has one life and one must try to spend it in the least painful way possible,” he muses. “We have to enjoy all the moments, and that’s what I try to do.”

He enjoys his work so much that he sometimes paints through the night, not realizing he has forgotten to sleep until he notices his roommate is leaving for work.

Fun also means sky diving, wind surfing, sailing, skiing and traveling--to far-off destinations chosen primarily because he likes the sound of their names.

His adventurous spirit was not easily put down when he tried to please his mother by enrolling in engineering school in Paris before he decided to pursue a career as an artist. He lasted only six months. “I was good,” he says. “But I didn’t think it would be a very exciting life.”

Franqueuil has found opportunities for excitement--particularly in his work--so rich in Orange County that he’s decided to stay and become a U.S. citizen.

It did take some adjusting to reach that decision, however.

An open, laid-back man who makes friends easily wherever he is, Franqueuil struggled at first with the impression that people here weren’t interested in having a good time.

“People are very involved with their work, more so than in France. There’s not much time left for doing things spontaneously.”

But as his art attracted attention, he attracted new friends, and he learned that “people here do have fun, but they plan for it--three weeks ahead.”

Now, he says: “I like the American way of life. I especially like the way your talent is recognized here. In France, I’d have to wait until I was dead to be recognized. In Europe, you have old habits, old culture and old ways of thinking, and you have to struggle against that all the time. It stops your mind.

“This is a new country and everything has to be tried. Whatever your age, the attitude is if you can do something, go for it. There’s hope that everybody can succeed.”

He doesn’t find the open display of material success in this county off-putting, though he’s most comfortable in tattered jeans and work shirts, with paint on his fingers and his sleeves rolled up.

“People have money, but they’ve worked for it,” he says. “I like the way they’re proud of what they get and show it. In Europe, if you get very rich, you try to hide it from the poor. Here, you don’t have to be ashamed of what you have.”

He hopes his art will bring him enough success so he can someday buy a boat and sail around the world. Flying an airplane, his own, is another dream.