Sandrine Pelissier

Originally from France, Sandrine Pelissier has been living in North Vancouver, Canada for the past 16 years.

Sandrine Pelissier is very inspired by her Pacific west coast surroundings and paints the BC landscape, figures and still life, mixing elements of drawing and patterning into her paintings.
Her work has been collected and exhibited extensively in Canada and internationally. She is also part of the Art Rentals and sales program of the Vancouver Art Gallery.

Many of her paintings have been published in Art books and magazines (Artist Magazine, Watercolor Artist Magazine, Acrylic Magazine, International Artist Magazine). She is working on her second book with North Light/F+W Books. She already published a watercolor instruction book: Fearless Watercolor for beginners, adventurous painting techniques to get you started.

Sandrine Pelissier is an active member in her community, as a co-founder of the North Shore Art crawl, a co-founder of a weekly life drawing group, a board member of the North Vancouver Arts Council, and has been invited as a juror for public art, art grants and juried exhibitions.?
Artist Statement
At the core of my work is an exploration of the balance between opposite concepts, like the symmetry of geometric patterns and the asymmetry of organic designs, transparency and solidity, reality and imagination.

The play between symmetry and asymmetry is perceptible in the superimposition of ornamental patterns on top of biological structures like tree trunks. It also shows in the representation of natural patterns like the rings of a tree with geometric repetitive shapes. In my still life paintings, the delicate organic shapes of the flora are strongly contrasting with very bold decorative patterns.

This elaborate patterning in my paintings gives them a look reminiscent of fabric or paper collage, although all the designs are actually hand painted. They are also evoke at times the minimalism and attention to detail of Japanese woodcuts, as well as an influence of my French heritage and its Art deco tradition.

The patterning is not only there for aesthetic reasons, it has a connection to biology, as a symbol of multiple generations with slight variations and the process of evolution. It also refers to the fact that any biological entity, even the most asymmetric and misshapen ones become very geometric once you go to a cellular or molecular level.