Nikita Schumacher

Nikita's painting is equal to itself: it contains its share of a secret buried somewhere under matter. Which is revealed for who will know how to look. With candor, she tries to let herself be tamed while keeping deep within herself the wild spirit of a past whose suffering Nikita wishes to silence. “I paint what I am,” she says. She is this artist who seeks to feel more than to understand. With a pictorial gesture that contains its graphic dimension, she takes the risk of leaving the viewer disconcerted.

From her years of artistic training, in perfect autodidact, she kept this pencil stroke which keeps her in contact with the earth; the figure is there, graphically presented just below, with all the strength of the psychic load that can be attached to it, but it hides itself, escapes from view with extreme modesty to only appear at brief moments in semi-darkness or in bright light. The same is true when Nikita, armed with her aerosol canister, sets out to reproduce the bark of the trees before she scrapes the material until the desired effect is obtained. When you look at a tree, you are far from imagining the treasures it shelters, the title of one of her works provides information on the inner turmoil of an artist who seeks stability, strength and calm in her own roots. Under his expert fingers, a dance is born: that of the very colorful variations of wood species in the heart of the forest.

A work by Nikita cannot be looked at, it approaches, it is experienced as a moment of deep intimacy. She does not appropriate either, on the contrary it is she who chooses you, after allowing herself to be desired for a long time. “As an artist, I try to show how invisible the invisibility of the visible is,” explains Nikita, as if to better abandon the viewer to his own desire. To approach the work, first a title: a simple, descriptive and stripped down word, which takes on the appearance of an affect. A thinness of the subject which allows the opening towards an unsuspected imaginary space. The rest is only sensation, fortuitous emotion, within the framework of a nourished relationship between the painter and his canvas, between his canvas and the spectator. No certainty however, the colors remain free, blue, red or orange. They appear almost inaccessible, so much do they slip away again, causing the furtive sensation in the distance: like a frantic flight. It is up to the viewer to find the common thread, to accept to dive into the emotion in order to live it fully. And thus to create the conditions which allow it to move forward.

She lives and works in France.