Kerstin
Paillard

Education:

1995-1996 : Preparatory Class in Fine Arts, Ecole des Beaux de Vallauris, France
1996-1999 : Bachelor in Contemporary Art, Villa Arson, Nice, France
2000-2005 : Master Degree in Art History, University Paul Valéry, Montpellier, France

About:

Kerstin Paillard, born in 1977 in Paris (France), grown up in Stockholm (Sweden), is a Franco-Swedish artist who lives and works between Nice and Stockholm. She draws her inspiration from her legacy, double culture, the beauty of nature, the northern and southern light and skies, as well as her emotions and dreams. Her pictural style is a sensitive and original combination, fluctuating between Abstract Expressionism and Color Field Painting (Helen Frankenthaler, Rothko, Emil Nolde, Degas).

Louise Bourgeois once said « Colour is stronger than language. It’s a subliminal communication. »
Ever since she was a child, she has always seen colours in everything. Colours are her way to understand the world, to translate what she feels, smells, tastes or sees.
She only uses the pure pigments of the dry pastels from Blockx and Sennelier (because of their high quality pigments), that she crushes, smashes and smears on the canvas, with her fingers and hands, kneeling on the floor, feeling the textures: it is a very physical way of painting. Like Degas’ late works in pastel, her pastelworks are more painted than drawn : she puts coat after coat of colored chalk on the canvas, moistening them and piling up one surface on another, to go back to the deep, sonorous colors of the Venetians, to bring up the best of every colour, vibrations, force and sensibility.

Her abstract paintings are a personal expression of her fascination for colours and forms, the mysterious atmosphere of the North and the brightness of the South, the skies and their ever changing design. Rhythm, harmony and textures are very important in her work.
Like Rothko, she is moved by color relationships, but she doesn’t want her pictures appreciated solely for their spectral qualities. She wants the paintings to be highly expressive, to glow from within, conveying strong emotional content.

The paintings are organic, deep, spiritual, celestial, dreamful and romantic, they aim to be expressive and sensitive. She creates images that question the spectator and invite him to take part of an immaterial world, filled with serenity, existentialism and poetry.

This summer and fall she did an Art Residency in the North of Sweden, in a little village called Västra Örträsk in the region of Lapland.
Here started a new body of work, inspired by the light, the sky, the colours, the nature and the people of Laponia. The paintings are a tribute to Lapland, to the savage swedish landscapes, to her second home country. They express her admiration and fascination for the Northern skies and lights and the silence of the nights in Laponia.
The experience of landscapes so wide that nothing could stop ones vision and dreams, touched her deeply and this feeling of freedom emerged as a new element of composition in her paintings.
With this body of work she wants to invite the viewers to an immaterial world filled with serenity and hope, to embrace them with the particular atmosphere of Laponia, make them travel, dream and spur their desire of exploration and freedom.