Nathalie Harvey

Nathalie Harvey is a Franco-American artist who lives and works in Paris. She was born in Saint-Paul-de-Vence in 1975. She graduated from the Ecole Nationale des Arts Decoratifs in Paris. She has exhibited in Paris, St Paul de Vence, Seattle, Berlin, Los Angeles, Brussels, Puligny Montrachet, and the Museum of Marrakech.

“Paint is above all a toy and my workshop a magnificent adventure playgroud where accidents always prove positive and inspirational. The feminine has always been my inspiration", says Nathalie Harvey.

In a meticulous exploration of color and matter, she uses the intemporal images of art history to research the power of femininity. Multiform, each painting boldly plunges into an exploration of the obscure side of her feminine fantasies. Far from enlightening us, the artist invites us to loose ourselves in the endless complexity of her big formats, her palette of vibrant colors and a game of raw material.

The Mona Lisa or the Meninas are sources of inspiration in her reflection through their capitvating double nature, of portraits exposed to our gaze, visibe and overrepresented even, but whose essence and mystery seem intangibl. She diverts and undresses them as she did before woth her series "Tueuses" (Killers), by tranforming the bodies of the women into creatures, marionettes or characters of comics. Their violence and expressiveness is more important than the figures themselves, that only unveil themselves a little to emerge with more strength afterwards.

Nathalie Harvey's self portraits from her debuts were like infinite palimpsests, relevant for her approach in which the figure is an impossible image, beyond the real feminine nature. She expresses this feminine nature through her gestures, sometimes brutal and sometimes soft, in vibrant colors that strike the eye, in order to get rid of clichés.