« À
celle qu'on voit apparaître
Une
seconde à sa fenêtre
Et
qui, preste, s'évanouit
Mais
dont la svelte silhouette
Est
si gracieuse et fluette
Qu'on
en demeure épanoui »
G. Brassens “Les Passantes”
I found that those words express a similar feeling of what I experience when I
catch a glimpse of what could be a beautiful composition. The light that passes
through branches and leaves and touches the plants that lie below. I see it
from the corner of my eye, but before the information gets to my mind, I am
already gone, keeping the pace of my day to day life. When it’s possible I come
back to the spot and try to capture in a picture what took me by surprise.
What captures my attention is the shape of the leaves, the delicacy of
their design; the curve of a branch, its bearing and elegance. I find them in
the compositions offered by weeds invading an embankment, between nettles and
wild grasses, brambles, ivy, ferns and even dead leaves. The latter, dried out,
are twisted into improbable positions with an elegance and presence of their
own.
The main subject of my work is nature, and more particularly
plants, the ones we don't pay much attention to, the ones we pull out in
well-kept gardens...
I want to highlight this beauty, unloved by ordinary passers-by, and
give it a place among the bouquets of 17th-century tulips.
To do this, I choose intertwined elements, with leaves of different
shapes, compositions with dynamic lines, in search of an almost sensual
elegance.
The principles on which is based my work is that:
1/ the human eye can only perceive three primary colors of light: red,
green and blue, therefore all colors that we see are composed of those three;
2/ the perception of colors is eminently subjective.
By adjusting the levels of those three colors, we can change the
perception of the world around us.
Playing with the color parameters, looking for the bright or dreamy hue,
just as if I were standing in front of a canvas with my palette, I adorn these
plants with unexpected shades, until I reach a new balance, far from the diktat
of chlorophyll.
From there, it's just a short step to forgetting the form and the
subject, and retaining only the colors that blend into each other. They are
reminiscent of the light that passes through a stained-glass window and fades,
coloring whatever is in its path. Or the blotches to which shapes are reduced
when you squint, dazzled by the light... and I touch what seemed beyond my
reach... the abstract.
What I'm looking for is for passers-by to be captivated by the color and
for their eyes to wander from one leaf to the next in the maze of
intertwined leaves and branches; for the colors to envelop them and evoke an
emotion, so that they don't pass by unaffected, just as I was seized, drawn
away from my everyday life.
