Brigitte Marionneau

Brigitte Marionneau was born in 1958.

Between 1980 and 1988 she was a student of Masamichi Noro at the Kinomichi Center in Paris where she learned Japanese body art. At the same time, she studied Raku with Camille Virot. At the end of her years of apprenticeship, Brigitte Marionneau set up her studio in the Center Region, between Bourges and La Borne. She will keep this workshop until 2018, when she will then settle in Loire-Atlantique.

In 1993, Brigitte Marionneau was invited to Northern Arizona University in the United States where she worked on the development of a wall for peace. Two years later, she made a study trip to Ethiopia which led to various international ceramic meetings in La Borne in 1996 entitled Terres du Sud.

Over the years, Brigitte Marionneau has been invited to many cultural events such as the Mediterranean ceramics workshop at the National Ceramics Center in Tunis (1997), the Gyeonggi International ceraMIX Biennale in Icheon, South Korea (2011) , or at Couleur Céramique as a guest masterclass at L'Anse St Jean in Quebec (2015).

Artistic approach

I discovered Raku clay and ceramics in the 80s at a time when all the pieces of a puzzle came together and determined the rest of my life. I then learned to model, to work the bowl, to apprehend this living material that is the earth. I took the time necessary to understand its specificities, its laws, its drying times. It was like a long journey. For several years, I worked the red, polished, smoky soils. It was related to various trips to Arizona and Africa. In 2006, I felt that I had nothing more to say.

A cycle was coming to an end, another could begin. Start by dropping the color, I needed white and black. With a horsehair carbonization technique. A horsehair print on white was like a "Sign" by Henri Michaux. Like calligraphy! Then, gradually, I closed my volumes. My pieces have become sculptures. Some are now completely black, as if inked in the darkness of carbon. A black animated by the material, smooth or textured, so that the light can work".