Chrystel Groot

Originally from Bordeaux, I have been living on the island of Oléron for over 20 years.

I have always needed to express myself through the arts. I've always been drawing. I study plastic arts and music in parallel but painting, graphic design, drawing, working with materials take over very quickly. After studying Philosophy and Plastic Arts, I turned professionally towards communication and the promotion of tourist destinations. I lock up my artistic desires in a corner of my head for years. I know, I feel that I'm missing something to achieve exactly what I want to deliver... I stick to very "academic", "school" ideas, I continue with pleasure to reproduce, draw and paint but I don't escape me to other horizons.

Then in 2011, at age 41, fate turned my life upside down with metastatic breast cancer. I am fighting to resume my life as before until June 2017 when a new progression of the disease forces me to face reality.

A click? A liberation? A certain total letting go and the very strong desire to exist differently. I then take the brushes. No more realism, no more figurative: I feel like a colorist above all! From figurative painting I devote myself exclusively to abstract art. I need to touch, to work, to transform matter.