Déterminée

Artists statement

I started photographing walls in 1997 when I joined the faculty of Toulouse Le Mirail, in Applied Arts: the richness of the surfaces, the lines, shapes, reliefs and colours in interaction... and all those words left by passers-by.

Spontaneous compositions resulting from all this that "jumped out at me", traces of human action, of the passing of time... Walls and ruins fascinate me. They are a paradox: they shout or whisper, they expose or protect. They can arouse fear or curiosity. They are imbued with life and bear witness. They allow communication but can also break it.

The wall is a call to look, to contact, to draw, and is not only a silent component of the architecture: the "wall material" speaks and is a kind of living memory.

I see painting, on the one hand, as a way of translating what the walls tell me, and on the other hand, as a way of creating my own walls. Initially abstract, my practice has evolved with the use of stencils, first used in the street.

I cut my stencils from photographs that I work on, sometimes beforehand, by contrasting them. On the canvas I look for a mixture: movement, dynamic matter, forms that struggle or give in to erasure. Moreover, my technique is mixed: I use acrylic paint, inks, pastels, spray cans and sometimes cement. I juxtapose and build dualities of materials and colours... or complementarities. My initial training being scientific, my practice is also inspired by the investigation process.