Monique Gervais

Born January 14, 1942, initially a teacher.

Discovery of sculpture in 1976. Devoted to it full-time since 1986. Trainee student in sculpture at the Besançon School of Fine Arts, nude drawing lessons, internship in a sculptor's workshop.

Materials used: Initially, earth, plaster, plastiroc, possibly wax, then casting of the model sculpture in bronze via a foundry, finally chiseling and patina of the bronze sculpture. From the molds, creation of resin reproductions.

Personality: Works around the human body; creates nudes inlaid with a surrealist drawing of lines representing the inner energy, liberated, which dares to show itself on the surface, blossoming of a forbidden life, permission of love... We can call them lines of life, of force or hatching.

"The day when chance placed a shapeless mass of earth between my fingers with the order to make it a living being, I experienced the first upheaval of sculpture: the impression of creating life. I wanted to express birth: I continued sculpture Representative of a life emerging within me, I became the sculptor of a slow blossoming. As this inner blossoming is fused with that of the body, I sculpt the human body. I chose bronze for its beauty and. because it expresses, in the fusion, heat and light Little by little, mysterious lines appeared on the surface of the bodies... I understood that they were lines of life, daring to enter opening the carnal envelope - concealing carapace - to reveal the interior intensity initially forbidden and becoming permitted, lines seeking in space, with sculpture, the dream of the absolute, the inaccessible ideal".