Christine’s work and personality have only recently come to light. And yet she’s not a beginner, having been studying painting for the past 10 years through diverse classes such as visual arts, acrylic or oil painting. At the moment she is really into knife painting, a technique she finds more intense physically but one which allows for a greater freedom of movement.
The Galerie Blanche is proud to showcase her work here in Giverny, the city of one of her favourite painters. She seems to really enjoy herself and wants to us to share in this enjoyment. Be it her light touch, chromatic environments or the vast white areas that are sky-like.
She is taking us into atmospheric landscapes (Dans le jardin de Claude, dedicated to Monet and her father?), inviting us under an arbor for tea (Tinder), or letting us witness a romantic rendez-vous (La balançoire). But not only does her work allow the viewer to let themselves go such as with (Ballade) or (Rêverie), it also shares her own more personal questions about happiness, seduction and solitude by reinterpreting the rococo style or the libertine aspects of Fragonard that she particularly likes. (Facebook) and (Solitude sur un banc) are appropriate examples of this idea.
The human bodies she paints, mostly women, usually have their face blurred or sometimes represented only by their eyes. The lady (Paravent) sat in her chair in front of an open window on a breezy day is thinking. The blank spaces that she leaves, like an unfinished painting not filled with colour, (Acte II) are just part of the other wanderings that she wants the viewer to experience. The short-lived sentiment is always an important part of her work. She chooses mockery over the reality of life’s soap-opera, advising us to simply enjoy the moment.
Claude Miquel. 2016
