naissance

Dear Ayline,

Our exhibition is called Un Jardin Secret.

The 'secret place’ or the ‘secrets of women’ was a term used to describe the Gravid Uterus. Previous to the twenty-first century any documentation of the uterus was hidden. Illustrations, depictions and writings were only accessed by scholars and locked away in libraries, palaces and cathedrals. Today we have access to these anatomical images and writings. The past 100 years has slowly revealed the wonder of the uterus. A place were we all come from. I have loved exploring this place and the space where we find our first connection to nature. The secret garden or un jardin secret is a celebration of the wonder of this place and an opportunity to look deeper into our spiritual and physical relationship with nature.

I’m interested in the 'Elysian Fields' and the many connections to this earth that run through your poems.

Have you found a heavenly place on this earth?

Dear Rebecca,

When I think about a paradise on earth, an image comes to me immediately. This place is a small seaside town on the pacific side of Costa Rica known as Uvita. I have been there several times and my visual meditations also lead me there. Some of my paintings for "Un jardin secret" are images of that place. The thick tropical jungle contrasts with the wide ocean view and I am interested in this threshold. Everything here is alive. Ecosystems are rich in exotic bird life, lush jungle foliage, and a dramatic range of wildlife. As an artist, I try to absorb this living expression of nature in order to understand within my body.

When I was looking at your book "Life in Death" yesterday the similarities in our interrest for nature struck me. Nature's vulnerable state of transition has always been a source of inspiration for me and I can see it in your installations as well. The inner sensitivity that decaying matter offers to see has so much to say and I really enjoy looking closely at your still lifes from photography that reminded me of the painting of the Renaissance.

In what way do you approach the concept of cycle in your creative process?

Dear Ayline,

The cycle of life is everywhere, it is nature. I often struggle with the concept of time and I find that there is an impossible struggle inside myself to hold onto life's beautiful moments longer than I should. To pause and be. I became obsessed with preservation and trying to desperately treasure everything I found in nature. Death is many things but when looking at flowers I found that the sublime could be found in this place, just after life and before the flower turns to dust. When I create my installations I try to create spaces that slow time down. Places to stop, heal and observe. In the cycle I love exploring the place between life and death.

The place you mentioned in Costa Rica, Uvita, sounds bursting with life, a place where the ocean meets the land, is a place where life should be abundant. I am in love with this earth and those places that are bursting with life. I am often overwhelmed in nature and I am immediately transported into the spiritual because my senses are on overdrive. A season in the UK has come to mind, Spring. Every year I am overwhelmed by the speed of life and its abundance.

Dear Rebecca,

I understand when you talk about being submerged in the beauty of spring in the wild. I am particularly moved by the color of the fresh leaves, such a pure and strong green at the same time. It is a short transition, the color settles after a few days but I feel the nature vibrate of this color as a pure and strong statement of life. In the same way, watching a flower blossom as a deep feeling of victory over death, vulnerability and beauty as a weapon.

I try to keep these values close to me while I work and I feel it too in your process. With the conservation of flowers, at the collection and then at the installation where the spectator went out into this allegory where time is suspended. Likewise, my bathers are in immersion, the water envelops the entire part of the skin, gravity has no power on the body. I would like to suggest in my work the slowness with which you spoke earlier.

Sometimes in my meditations, I like to play at focusing on the contact of air on my skin as if it were covered with water.

Dear Ayline,

I love your description of ‘air' and our relationship to it, I can see how it is comforting to envisage the world like this, it makes everything tangible.

The spaces between fullness can be the most powerful of spaces. I’m always conscious of allowing the viewer to have an element of freedom within the artwork, the empty spaces allow the viewer to observe. Journeying through the artwork or finding a place to rest in the space is necessary to fully engage with the piece and with nature. The fullness comes when the viewer is enveloped in the artwork, they complete the space. I play with the physical relationship between the viewer and the material. It is interesting to consider the voids binding everything together with the invisible element ‘air’. I believe that this space is spiritual.

I’ve been thinking about how incredible it is to have an exhibition with a focus on femininity. I look back over history and I see all of the women who have sacrificed for us to have this place in time. Women communicating in art with integrity have laid our foundation.

Dear Rebecca,

I think it is fascinating to be a women and to be able to express my visions thought my work. Of course from ancient to modern art, the hypersexualization of a woman’s body has always been present, add to the fact that it is the 21st century and women are still underrepresented in the art world. I’d like to quote the Guerilla Girls movement and their famous postcard “Do women have to be naked to get into the Met Museum ? – Less than 5% of the artists in the Modern Art sections are women, but 85% of the nudes are female.” As women, we should no longer be objectified and act as the receiver of an active male gaze. In the patriarcal society we live it is really important as feminine artist to affirm our female gaze to shape differently the traditional idealization of beauty.

You mentioned the change in our bodies and the multiple stages we go through as women, I believe in the power this knowledge brings. I understood the affirmation of maturing my vision of beauty, wilder and untamed. As you, I believe a flower is beautiful at every stage.

Dear Ayline,

Thank you for your reply. It is interesting what you mentioned in searching for belonging in the world and in body. I often wonder how many unseen obstacles are in our way. I had a real sense of belonging when I was young.

When I was a child I lived in a place where the landscape was flat and our village was surrounded by fields that went on for miles and miles. My father was a gardener for a large National Trust property and he would maintain formal and informal gardens. These gardens were like a playground to me and my brothers and sister. We grew up in the village, in the gardens and in the surrounding fields. My favourite memories were from exploring the land and making dens in hidden wild places. As a child I was happy in nature and I felt free in nature. During my school years I found refuge in art. I would explore my relationship with nature through art. I studied Fine Art and loved working large scale, oil on canvas gave me disciplines in understanding time, tones and layers. However, I wanted to feel like I was in the canvas. I wanted to be surrounded by the colour’s and forms.

Dear Rebecca,

A Few days after our first conversation I went to the Orangerie museum in Paris, instinctively my foot took me to the large-scale Water Lilies decoration by Claude Monet. I sat there for hours, contemplating every detail and feeling the energy of the colors and patterns. I thought about our collaboration and our common desire to express the feminine sensitivity. Both of our world were here; The suspension of the foliage, the reflections of the water, the sensuality and a feeling of empowerment by the strength of nature...

In the nest of the two elliptical rooms within the museum where the 8 water lilies’s panels are, I’ve found all the inspiration I needed for our show « Un jardin secret » and a deep feeling of serenity. Overall, I think this is the most powerful tool an artist can offer to the viewer: serenity.

I read that Monet gave his first two large panels to the Nation as a symbol of peace the day after the armistice, on November 12, 1918. What a beautiful gesture! Beauty as the response to the violence and cruelty.