News
Poetry of the abstract by Odile Escolier
- 25/08/2022
Discover the exclusive interview of the artist, who tells us more about her and her new collection that unveils all the poetry of the Abstract...
1. Introduce yourself in a few words? What is your background?
My artistic career began in the 80s, alongside a scientific and medical path. As the years go by, the creative aspect becomes more obvious.
In 2000, this career was enriched through the encounter of a community of 60 artists, to which I devoted myself as vice-president for 3 years. In 2003, I then moved on towards a professional status, the exhibitions followed one another, on a national and international level.
2. How did your vocation as an artist emerge?
First, as a teenager, by collecting exhibition posters and 1980 onward, by spontaneously practicing drawing, watercolors, and pastel, followed by acrylic and mixed techniques.
3. How does a painting session take place? What is the process of creating one of your artworks?
Mostly in silence, during the day, while favoring natural light.
By working on several formats during the same session, small or large, so that there is room for drying times, which is necessary for the superposition of the different layers. Overlays highlight the effects of light, due to the material. When the background is sufficiently worked upon, the subject can be considered in a more precise manner (characters, trees, or an abstract atmosphere).
By integrating a variety of materials beyond their usual use. Coatings, sawdust, mortar, pigments, sand, mixed with acrylic, collages of recycled posters used as palettes for my paintings and then they are torn and reassembled. So many tools and mediums that lead to a wide field of exploration for me.
There are also notebooks, many notebooks, sketches, travel, or purely imaginary, expression of another creative time, which takes outside the workshop, while traveling, or during the winter. They are not actually precursors of an artwork’s draft or a small format, just a moment of creation.
4. What are your artistic inspirations, influences, and references?
Giacometti for the material, the sensual aspect, and the artist’s creative research quest. Villeglé for the emotion, which is felt through his posters, the traces, the erasure. Vieira Da Silva for her latest works, shades of white or blue. Rothko for the silence and space of his large flat colors. Hundertwasser for his great freedom of expression, the fresh and poetic aspect of his artwork, not to mention, his humanist research. The artist like to feel closer to nature, by moving around through varied atmospheres and landscapes.
5. What is your relationship to the themes that are highlighted in your artworks?
The taste for encounter, meeting intimately as a duo or a small group, the importance of family. To relish the silence of nature, to feel alive in the middle of mountainous or marine spaces is what I like to depict.
6. What is the significance behind the colors you use?
The colors and their associations can vary according to desires, what is imprinted consciously, without a direct meaning.
7. What was the best piece of advice given to you as an artist?
To be bold.
8. Can you tell us something about yourself that people might be surprised to hear?
I am shy…
9. Talk to us about your capsule collection? What were your inspirations? What does this completely abstract orientation with matter evoke within you?
The inspirations mainly derive through nature, seascapes, and the hulls of fishermen's boats, their aged and peeling superimposed artworks.
During repeated stays, while walking on customs trails from Normandy to Brittany via the Cotentin, my eye seems to linger along the lines of watercolors, low tides, and boat hulls, just like material landscapes.
These sensations put down roots within explorations by mixing paints and different papers, packaging, silk, posters which are recovered and recycled as a palette for my paintings. I printed some, tore others and used these poster pallets for their most graphic parts.
My artistic career began in the 80s, alongside a scientific and medical path. As the years go by, the creative aspect becomes more obvious.
In 2000, this career was enriched through the encounter of a community of 60 artists, to which I devoted myself as vice-president for 3 years. In 2003, I then moved on towards a professional status, the exhibitions followed one another, on a national and international level.
2. How did your vocation as an artist emerge?
First, as a teenager, by collecting exhibition posters and 1980 onward, by spontaneously practicing drawing, watercolors, and pastel, followed by acrylic and mixed techniques.
3. How does a painting session take place? What is the process of creating one of your artworks?
Mostly in silence, during the day, while favoring natural light.
By working on several formats during the same session, small or large, so that there is room for drying times, which is necessary for the superposition of the different layers. Overlays highlight the effects of light, due to the material. When the background is sufficiently worked upon, the subject can be considered in a more precise manner (characters, trees, or an abstract atmosphere).
By integrating a variety of materials beyond their usual use. Coatings, sawdust, mortar, pigments, sand, mixed with acrylic, collages of recycled posters used as palettes for my paintings and then they are torn and reassembled. So many tools and mediums that lead to a wide field of exploration for me.
There are also notebooks, many notebooks, sketches, travel, or purely imaginary, expression of another creative time, which takes outside the workshop, while traveling, or during the winter. They are not actually precursors of an artwork’s draft or a small format, just a moment of creation.
4. What are your artistic inspirations, influences, and references?
Giacometti for the material, the sensual aspect, and the artist’s creative research quest. Villeglé for the emotion, which is felt through his posters, the traces, the erasure. Vieira Da Silva for her latest works, shades of white or blue. Rothko for the silence and space of his large flat colors. Hundertwasser for his great freedom of expression, the fresh and poetic aspect of his artwork, not to mention, his humanist research. The artist like to feel closer to nature, by moving around through varied atmospheres and landscapes.
5. What is your relationship to the themes that are highlighted in your artworks?
The taste for encounter, meeting intimately as a duo or a small group, the importance of family. To relish the silence of nature, to feel alive in the middle of mountainous or marine spaces is what I like to depict.
6. What is the significance behind the colors you use?
The colors and their associations can vary according to desires, what is imprinted consciously, without a direct meaning.
7. What was the best piece of advice given to you as an artist?
To be bold.
8. Can you tell us something about yourself that people might be surprised to hear?
I am shy…
9. Talk to us about your capsule collection? What were your inspirations? What does this completely abstract orientation with matter evoke within you?
The inspirations mainly derive through nature, seascapes, and the hulls of fishermen's boats, their aged and peeling superimposed artworks.
During repeated stays, while walking on customs trails from Normandy to Brittany via the Cotentin, my eye seems to linger along the lines of watercolors, low tides, and boat hulls, just like material landscapes.
These sensations put down roots within explorations by mixing paints and different papers, packaging, silk, posters which are recovered and recycled as a palette for my paintings. I printed some, tore others and used these poster pallets for their most graphic parts.
10. What message or emotions do you wish to convey through this new artwork?
I was quite emotional when faced with these atmospheres, that nourished my imagination during these walks along the coast. Salty impressions, widened horizons, successive lines and changing lights. How does this translate into a moment in creation? How is emotion passed on and shared by other looks? Many questions and few answers in the mysterious twists and turns of creation.
11. An anecdote you would like to share?
Recently a professor from Wisconsin (Kenosha) who is working with his students on a writing project based on artwork, got in touch with me to ask me for image rights. A student of this professor chose one of my paintings that the latter saw on the website of Carré d’artistes, to write her text. This story based on this visual, will be published this summer, along with the painting.
