Art Hall - A2

This work represents an old house abandoned in a forest, still existing on Reunion Island, like a temple of a lost civilization left hanging. hence the title "nature takes over"..."I have grown up on the Reunion island and I have started drawing very early. As a child, I try to copy Boris Vallejo's illustrations and I dream of studying fine art’s, but there is no art school on my island. Once an adult, I find a job, start a family, but I keep drawing , between two household chores, two nappy changes, before and after work... I travel my island, again and again, with a biro in my pocket, and I sketch, I also take a lot of photos… I never get tired of the wonderful sights that my island offers : their abundance, their opulence, their generosity…. Here a waterfall, there a hut, the pattern of a branch, a perspective, ideal getaways …. 1999 … an enchanted break for me. My husband's job takes me and family to Paris for a few months, and I present my work at the Gobelins, the famous French Visual Arts school … I am 35 then and they give me the opportunity to train in layout and design for the 1st time in my life. Back on my island, I know who I am and what I want to do and to be. It obviously becomes my muse, my inspiration; I want to discover it constantly, to make it known, to contemplate it, to safeguard it. Today, even though I am modestly installed, even though I don’t have a real workshop, even though I still use my humble, small, flat, house as a workshop, I still fill hundreds of A4 sheets, with landscapes drawn with my black biro and where Nature reigns supreme. I opt for black and white because what is paramount / essential to me in this scenery is light. The light, alone, as in the film ""The Night of the Hunter"" by Charles Laughton with Robert Mitchum for example or also in ""Princes and Princesses"" by Michel Ocelot … My aim? Not to get overwhelmed by the colours too easily… to concentrate on the richness of the contrasts and shapes. In the future, I would 1st like to enhance my black-and-white A4 drawings in 2 ways. I plan to partly colour some of them. But I am also thinking of scanning them in very high definition and print them as very high-quality black-and-white A0 photos. Finally, I am planning to set up a studio that will allow me to produce large formats but also to exhibit my work, receive the public as well as students. I imagine it as a very open space, where you don't really know if you are inside or outside.