Sophie Dumont

Born in Paris on April 9, 1964. Lives and works in Langrune sur Mer (Normandy).

Sophie Dumont left France to live for a few years in the West Indies, in Spain and finally in Morocco.

She stores a host of images and colors that she will keep carefully in the depths of her memory.

On her return to France in 1991, she took the plunge and took up the brushes. From her earliest childhood, she was immersed in the middle of painting, through the drawings of Henriette Dumont, her paternal grandmother who sketches at all times, children and grandchildren with a line that can recall that of Matisse. .

Sophie can also be proud to belong, through her great-great-grandmother, the first wife of Charles Baltet, Hortense Mignard, to an illustrious family of Trojan stock, that of the painters Nicolas and Pierre Mignard.

Sophie Dumont is interested in the history of art, works for several years, researches, discovers to fully realize herself around 2007.

His invoice becomes stronger, the layers multiply on the canvas, revealing a beach or cliffs to whoever wants to discover them.

His oil work takes on its full value in successive layers and transparencies in shades of gray and white.

Sophie DUMONT extends her exploration of the Norman universe.

She stubbornly probes the slightest vibrations of this familiar environment.

The omnipresent landscape hides from sight to reveal furtive apparitions that drown in the pearly and translucent light.

The subliminal vision of a horizon cut by distant cliffs evokes a daily life punctuated by a space in perpetual mutation.

Nothing disturbs the tranquility of a space shaped by these diaphanous lights, a mixture of grays and shadows that play subtly with the fluidity of air and water. These landscapes imbued with a lyricism bordering on abstraction seem to move away from a reality that the heaviness of traditional painting wants to find in the recognizable.

The representation detaches irreversibly from the motif to better reflect the emotion aroused by total immersion in the painting. The image disappears before the senses, giving the spectator back his freedom of interpretation.

The contribution in certain paintings of materials such as gauze reveals at the same time the permanent quest for new efforts.

The hierarchy established in the canvas by different centers of interest reinforces the confrontation between material and light source. The lines of force are sometimes displaced in favor of a greater convergence towards the heart of the representation which remains abstract.

But the technical developments in no way affect the artist's predilection for large formats, nor his expression in a free choice of subjects, such as some which, for the first time, will mark a semblance of a (very limited) break with which remains a constant. An ostensible distance with the painting of patterns.

Critical

The abstract of Sophie DUMONT is not a concept, it is an approach where each canvas is built around a graphic design put into perspective by color.

The drawing can recall the modeling of a body or the meanders of a landscape. It is only the unpremeditated interpretation of a figurative idea, which takes other forms in space.

The canvas is structured around a set of curves and lines filtering the lights.

It is in this refined construction that the palette of often contrasting tones comes into play.

But the substance is never raw, drawing from its maturation lyrical effects which are the result of a fruitful work of the material. The knife shapes the material into successive layers that merge into a combination of shimmering colors.

The underlying presence of the different substrates creates this vibration born of the contrast between material and color, to give the representation a life of its own, independent of any reference. The viewer's gaze, far from being guided, is invited to travel freely through the canvas.

His perception is only the expression of his own emotions, simply submitted to the effect of the modulations transcribed by the artist. Hence this permanent relationship between works with sometimes changing appearances and spirit, but which symbolize a coherent and sincere approach.

François Laune, Art Critic