6 Fine Artistes at the Alliance.F this week
We’re always raving about the EXCELLENT cultural projects put on by both the Alliance Francaise and IFAS (French Institute). Rest assured if you need a quality arty or musical experience that you can count on, head on over to a French gig with confidence. BRAVO!
There’s a new art exhibition opening at the Alliance from Wed 6 June featuring 6 female artistes – it’s only on till Friday so do your best to get there as soon as you can! For those who of us who like to hang around pouting and eating fromage with French flowing all round, click on the flyer image for more info on opening night.
Read about the artists below and for more info and directions visit the Alliance website here .
VALERIE SAVARY – Valérie Savary, Portrait de femmeacrylic, 60 x 50 cm
Valerie Savary started painting at the age of eight and, for the following 10 years, took drawing lessons which taught her the techniques of mastering subjects such as the ocean, trees and portraiture. She then completed her basic training by drawing nudes for another two years.
Acrylics are her preferred medium, which she finds more modern and practical than oils or watercolours.
KIRA OWEN – Kira Owen, Ngwene womanacrylic on canvas, 76 x 61 cm
Since childhood, Kira Owen has lived in many different countries and has always had a keen interest in art and design, often influenced by her immediate surroundings. She studied decorative painting, specialising in faux finishes and trompe l’oeil, at the Hampstead Decorative Art School in London and undertook a number of commissions for private clients. In the late 90’s she spent four years in New York City working for a graphic design agency where she was exposed to many different creative techniques.
AUDE FACQUET – Aude Facquet, Femme Zuluacrylic, 26 x 21 cm
Aude Facquet paints primarily with oils, preferably with a palette knife. For the past year, she has been trying to use other mediums such as acrylics, pencil or Indian ink and paint different subjects such as portraits or perspective. She says that, for her, painting is not only a matter of serious study and relaxation but also a way of analysing her own sensibility.
CATHERINE BEILLARD-DIJKHOF – Catherine Beillard, Afriqueoil, 40 x 40 cm
Catherine was born in 1945 in Gray, France. Her father was a doctor (GP). Her mother, a teacher of classics, was also a painter who exhibited with the Salon des Independants from 1965 to 1969.
In 2000, after 34 years as a medical practitioner in different parts of France and overseas, as well as raising four children, she retired from professional life and moved with her husband to Leiden in the Netherlands.
Since then she has produced more than 200 paintings, encouraged by her family, her friends and her painting teachers, Jacques Turk in Holland and Pereira Ruez in Portugal. She has also been inspired by living in different countries around the world : Holland, Portugal, Australia, Argentina, South Africa.
Catherine’s paintings always focus on ‘vibrant’ subjects captured in different countries, whether humans or animals or nature itself. In South Africa, she has concentrated on painting portraits of women from different ethnic groups. Overall, her latest work is a hymn of praise to the black African woman : her beauty, her strength and her courage.
MONICA MEACCI – Monica Meacci, Lysoil, 94 x 140 cm
Originally from Italy, Monica Meacci’s interest in painting flourished after she attended an art school in her native Florence. But it was in Africa that she found true inspiration.
Her works represent purity, such as in her “Lys” (Lily), and the beauty of undefined feminine lines. She also experiments with different techniques, creating a contrast between smooth oils and rough, coarse sand.
This exhibition offers a sample of her paintings and of her sensibility. She leaves us to our own interpretation of her art.
NATHALIE MAROTTE – Nathalie Marotte, Fleur au carréacrylic, 122 x 90 cm
Her work is imbued with the questing spirit and rich creative heritage of diverse artistic influences : the constructional compositions of the Cubists, (Braque, Picasso) ; the minimalist candour of the Fauvistes (Dufy, Matisse) ; the carefully considered abstractions of the Modernists (Miro, Kandinsky).
As she explains, her painting is spontaneous and fundamentally instinctive, fully formed in her imagination and rarely based on any preliminary sketches.
She expresses her artistic creed in a phrase from Antoine de St Exupéry, from the fox who tells the Little Prince : “You can only see with your heart, what is important is not visible to the human eye.”
