de picturis meis
“Painting a portrait is one of the noblest tasks in art.” (LL)
Drawing has been a constant presence in my life. Over the years, what began as a personal practice has developed into a sustained artistic journey, shaped by academic training in drawing and painting, and by an ongoing exploration of figurative representation.
Portraiture lies at the heart of my work. For me, it is a way of exploring what remains invisible beneath the features of a face: presence, emotion and inner life. Beyond likeness, I seek to reveal that presence as it emerges through a gaze, a posture, a barely perceptible gesture or a moment of silence. Children occupy a central place in this exploration. Captured while reading, playing the piano, playing, or lost in thought, they offer a space in which concentration, vulnerability, reverie and the most subtle emotions quietly unfold.
I pursue this approach through several media—graphite drawing, oil painting and, more recently, mixed media. Although each has its own language, they all share the same underlying process: building the image gradually through successive layers, seeking a balance between precision and suggestion, and deliberately leaving certain areas unresolved so that the viewer may enter the work with their own imagination.
My compositions often begin with photographs that I take myself. These images are edited, cropped and sometimes recomposed before becoming the starting point of the work. Rather than reproducing the photograph, drawing and painting gradually move away from it to create an autonomous image in which memory, emotion and light take precedence over mere description.
This attention to structure, proportion and compositional balance is in constant dialogue with a practice that embraces unpredictability, materiality and light. My work develops within this dynamic tension between control and freedom.
education
- Graduate of the Ecole des Arts de la Sorbonne, Université Paris 1 Panthéon – Sorbonne
- Académie des Beaux-Arts, Paris – academic drawing
- Studio Escalier, Paris – intensive summer programs in academic drawing
- Villa Thiole, Nice – oil painting, acrylic painting, academic drawing and art history
experience
- Graphic Arts Workshop Instructor, Sorbonne University
- Designed and led charcoal portrait workshops for faculty members and researchers at Sorbonne University as part of the CLAS (Comité Local d’Action Sociale) programme.
influences
Among the artists who have particularly shaped my artistic reflection are Corneliu Baba, Pierre Bonnard, William Bouguereau, André Brasilier, Caravaggio, Jean Siméon Chardin, Tsuguharu Foujita, Marie Laurencin, Amedeo Modigliani, Ernest Pignon-Ernest, Ilya Repin, Joaquín Sorolla, John Singer Sargent, Valentin Serov, Nicolae Tonitza, Remedios Varo and Johannes Vermeer.