Lady with red apples, 2025
Natalya Mougenot

With "Lady with Red Apples", French painter Natalya Mougenot continues her exploration of the emotional power of color and the beauty of simplicity. The canvas presents a woman seated at a table, her face undefined, her form outlined in bold strokes of turquoise and ochre. Before her rests a luminous bowl brimming with red apples — the central motif around which the entire composition seems to radiate.

Rendered in broad, confident brushstrokes, the scene blurs the line between portraiture and still life. Mougenot invites us not to read the woman's identity, but to feel her presence — an emblem of quiet reflection and contentment.

The painting is situated within Mougenot's ongoing dialogue with Post-Impressionism and Fauvism, drawing clear inspiration from Van Gogh, Matisse, and Cézanne. The expressive deformation of form, the pure, saturated hues, and the structural solidity of the composition speak to this lineage.

From Van Gogh, she inherits the urgency of gesture — each brushstroke is visible, alive, and honest. From Matisse, she borrows a sense of chromatic liberation, where color becomes emotion itself. From Cézanne, she learns the architecture of seeing — how to build volume and rhythm through planes of color.

“Cézanne taught me that every apple has a heartbeat; Matisse taught me that color has a soul. I try to paint both." — Natalya Mougenot

Mougenot refers to her chromatic philosophy as “dopamine art", a term she uses to describe paintings that elicit emotional well-being through color. In Lady with Red Apples, hues are chosen not for realism but for emotional resonance: the teal of the woman's garment balances the vitality of the apples; the pink and yellow background radiates warmth and inner peace.

“I paint for the nervous system, not the intellect. My colors are meant to make you feel alive again." — Natalya Mougenot

The reds of the apples, layered with magenta and coral, pulse like living energy — symbols of sensuality, nourishment, and life's sweetness. The teal body acts as a cool counterpoint, an anchor amid exuberance. Together they form what Mougenot calls a “chromatic heartbeat."

Beyond its vivid palette, "Lady with Red Apples" speaks to the artist's deep preoccupation with authenticity and presence. The faceless figure, deliberately simplified, rejects individual portraiture to become a universal representation of the human condition — serene, reflective, grounded. The apples, recurring symbols in Mougenot's work, evoke both earthly pleasure and spiritual simplicity.

“I paint the things that keep us human — fruit, light, silence, a shared table. They remind us that joy doesn't need noise." — Natalya Mougenot

This painting, like "Apples and Tea", celebrates the rituals of stillness — the quiet act of being, of noticing. The bottle beside the bowl, rendered with loose transparency, mirrors the woman's calm containment: both vessel and presence, both form and emptiness.

There is a subtle but profound feminine energy in Mougenot's work — not idealized, but embodied through honesty and intuition. The faceless woman becomes a stand-in for the artist herself, for the act of creation as self-reflection. The absence of facial detail rejects vanity; what remains is essence, gesture, and color — the truest language of feeling.

“Authenticity in art is like breathing — if you fake it, the painting dies." — Natalya Mougenot

Here, authenticity is conveyed through imperfection: uneven outlines, visible strokes, layered pigment. Mougenot's honesty of execution reflects her philosophy that art should feel before it convinces.

"Lady with Red Apples" is a luminous meditation on femininity, simplicity, and sensory joy. It is both portrait and still life, both external and interior. Through her radiant colors and confident brushwork, Mougenot transforms a quiet domestic moment into a visual hymn to gratitude and aliveness.

In her world, art is not escape — it is return: to color, to stillness.

Details: 
Title: "Lady with red apples"
Size:  50 x 65 cm (19,7 x 25,6 inches)
Medium:  Acrylic painting on heavyweight, professional acid-free paper 
Finish: Sealed with protective varnish
Framing:  Unframed 
Shipping: Carefully packaged; international delivery from France

About the Artist: 
Originally from Pavlodar, Kazakhstan, and now based in Lyon, France, Natalya Mougenot has spent over two decades refining her artistic voice. Her multicultural background and personal experience inform her bold, expressive works, which have found homes in private collections around the world.

Natalya's distinctive visual language blends Abstract Expressionism, Impressionism, Art Naïf, and Art Brut—resulting in paintings that are raw, instinctive, and emotionally resonant. Across her work, three values guide her: authenticity, sincerity, and honesty.

“Authenticity is everything," she says. “People can always feel when something is real—or when it's not. I want my work to be honest, to come from a place that's true."

In addition to painting, Natalya is also a passionate photographer. Her photographic work—also featured on this platform—mirrors her painterly sensibility: a poetic, observational approach that captures the quiet power of everyday life. For her, photography is both inspiration and a form of presence, often serving as visual sketches for future paintings or existing as standalone works.

Discover more of Natalya Mougenot's work—both paintings and photographs—and step into a world where movement, emotion, and human connection are expressed with striking clarity and truth.