An artist I am totally digging right now is Francoise Nielly. Her portraits are gorgeous and haunting. I love the realistic look she gives to each face in contrast with the bright, unrealistic colors she uses to paint them. I love portraits, and I think part of it is because I can never imagine being able to create something half as realistic or poignant if attempting to draw or paint a human face. I don't know what it feels like to be able to look into a person's face and translate their soul onto canvas. I don't know how, but I want to.
I do, however, know how it feels to be painted by someone who does. How it feels to look at a painting of you and feel like someone has captured a piece of you, simply using oils and a paint brush. Its an eerie feeling. A feeling of being disrobed, but at the same time understood. Understood by a stranger and exposed to whomever comes across the canvas. Laid bare for me and anyone else to see.
Nielly paints in Paris, but grew up in South France. She says, "all of that classical imagery of South France is very alive as an experience inside of me. Maybe it is what led me to the use of fluorescent colors in my paintings." She considers the Internet and the dishwasher to be the greatest inventions of the past 100 years. When speaking about her life and painting, she says, "I am a passionate woman and i am passionate about my life, about doing my life with intensity. That is the way i approach painting, traveling, reading, etc. Somehow, painting may be the love of my life; and as in every couple relationship it's a moving territory with high and lows, fights, weariness, desire, fire and water. It can be exhausting, exhilarating, boring, fun, sparkling... whatever i go through with it, i just can't stop loving it."* You can view more of her work here.
*pictures and excerpts from the biography on her painting website
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