Mireille DARMOIS

Attracted by a certain geometric abstraction, I first looked for it in urban landscapes or seaside landscapes, before finding it in the world of crystals.

This theme led me to develop a classic oil painting technique, which had been taught to me for six years in the workshops of José Español and Christoff Debusschère, towards mixed techniques allowing to bring out the brilliance. crystals within a rock matrix.

A shiny oil, smoothed with a knife, or the collage of shards of cut glass or mosaics, contrasting with a background enriched with sand or gravel, expresses the dazzling of the miner or the speleologist discovering a vein or a geode.

Later, while working on the agates, I noticed their resemblance to butterfly wings; she reminded me of the ancient myths of the Metamorphoses.

At the same time, in search of mineralogical models, I discovered the collection of Roger CAILLOIS (1913-1978) at the Natural History Museum and the works of this Academician passionate about rare stones. In his fundamental work on "Stones" (1966), Roger CAILLOIS notes that in the 17th century the Chinese scholar TCH'EN KI-JOU cited among the conditions favorable to the appreciation of painting: "to be surrounded by rare stones" . Chinese artists chose marble slabs whose veins pleased them, framed them and engraved their stamp on them.

Like many scholars of Imperial China, the French writer found landscapes, characters or mythical animals in agates or jasps and gave names to the most beautiful samples.

For him, the convergences of shapes and colors between the mineral and the living "warn the mind that there are vast laws which govern at the same time the inert and the organic".

It is this deep conviction of the Original Harmony that I try today to express in my paintings.

Mireille DARMOIS is Associate of Independent Artists Member of AIdAL (International Academy of Arts and Letters) and ARTEC (Contemporary European Art).