Anaïs Maar

"In my universe, sexuality, dysphoria, love, illness, violence meet, melt and burn. Intimacy, tenderness, mourning, boredom, the absurd, joy, completeness and incompleteness jolt and clash. My self-portraits multiply, forming complex and compulsive patterns that reveal my inner cosmos and question French figurative codes of the so-called feminine experience.

I play with many formats and tools to explore the various facets of my self. My art is a journey; it embodies my striving towards fulfillment, my navigation in the waves of my consciousness in search of stability. One wave surges from the depths of my belly; it is a magma that boils and explodes on my canvas, walls, papers, sheets and pieces of wood. 

Another wave is more peaceful, contemplative but also full of undigested romanticized clichés that allows me to talk about certain moments of my life and my relationships through the protection of symbolism.

My art is like the Mediterranean Sea; sometimes oil, sometimes fury; a delicate surf, full of mythologies.. A raging volcano under calm waters."

Her career in illustration and animated features has allowed her to develop a sensitive and graphic universe that focuses on shapes and colors. Simplicity, dynamism and color theory are at the core of her visual stance and vocabulary. Her art dances between positive and negative, abstract and figurative, narrative and conceptual, ancient and contemporary forms. 

It lies on solid foundations, thanks to her training in academic painting and the certain influence of contemporary painters and poets, Fauvists and Cubists, Russian avant-gardes, Japanese graphic designer, illustrated children books, mythological and medieval references.