His artist name, Janmar, is a childhood memory. It's what his parents called him long before he became a painter. Jean-Marie Chassé was born in 1974 in Meulan, in the Yvelines department, and since the opening of the Mékano space, he has had his studio in Rezé. Janmar may have set out to follow in the footsteps of his father, an engineer at Aérospatiale. But after earning a DEUG (Diploma of General University Studies) in science, he branched out into fine arts: "I had an overdose of things that were too Cartesian, and as always, I doodled..." He graduated from the École d'Orléans five years later with a national diploma in visual arts. His training focused more on visual communication and new technologies. He dreamed of becoming a freelance graphic designer and believed that his qualification would open all doors for him. He quickly became disillusioned: "In competition with highly skilled technicians, my temperament was too artistic and not technical enough." And it was another overdose: "Too much computer science and computer graphics; I needed to reconnect with the material that paint is made of."