Catherine Villermé

Aggregated history, specializing in cultural history of the modern period, I spent a large part of my youth in Africa before settling in France where I worked as a teacher. In 2015, a decisive encounter convinced me to dedicate myself fully to painting. After the Covid, I applied to an international exhibition, the first step towards exhibition circuits. I received several awards in 2024 and 2025, including the Senate medal and the city of La Rochelle prize. In May-June 2026 I will exhibit Moments suspended at the Galerie Rive de Loire at the château d'Ancenis.

I paint in the studio, distant from the subject. I work with oil, slowly, through successive layers, landscapes that I recompose from fragments of memory, photographs taken and then forgotten, emotions that only the texture remains. Memory is for me a living material that light passes through, fractures, reveals. . My work on memory now takes a resolutely autobiographical dimension. I elaborate a pictorial autofiction from incomplete narratives, silences, and omissions. My painting is an attempt to make appear what my memories have hidden from me.