Gloria Stetbay

To "construct" her paintings, Stetbay uses canvas, wood, covers the surface, kneads the material, sculpts it. In her works, the material becomes flesh, the painting becomes skin. The artist wishes to give an emotional quality to her painting, rhythm, space. The form and the light are born from crumpled contacts, from the color, from the reliefs of the material.

Stetbay strives to give her paintings the maximum of expressive intensity, to convey her feelings. Search for forms, reliefs provoking the desire to touch, caress, exploration of superimpositions, floating, undulating forms, omnipresent in her paintings. In her works, Stetbay integrates rhythm, inscribes melodic lines that unite with color, playing on matt or shiny surfaces, on asperities, spikes or curves that evoke a physical implication, a desire to share.

Having integrated the knowledge of drawing, composition, perspective, Stetbay, tackling an unusual and random technique, manages to transcribe it using various materials suitable for such a translation such as wood, paper, plaster, resin, iron, bronze. When it comes to abstract sculptures, Stetbay is in search of the image of the heart. It then sets aside formal reality and replaces it with a series of unusual and paradoxical elements which, irresistibly, contribute to the construction of a supra-reality. The flow of life in flowing matter, producing forms of spiritual and physical beauty, can elicit philosophical reflection in the viewer.

Regarding figurative sculptures, Stetbay plays with familiar themes from which she extracts, who knows, new truths. In each form her works bear the most direct stamp of her personality. Her optimism appears in particular in her desire to tackle monumental sculptures requiring the energy and time that her will and tenacity allow her to consider.

Training:

Beaux-arts d'Avignon and Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-arts de Paris.

Pictorial techniques:

Ink, pastel, acrylic, oil, mixed media.

Figurative period 1966 - 1995:

Copies of the Masters, portraits, sports themes, sumo, judo.

Abstract period:

Since 1995 during which she favors mixed techniques on wood panels.

Main exhibitions in France:

Cannes, Neuilly, Ile Saint Louis, Paris, Nice, Grasse, Sophia-Antipolis, Mougins, Galerie Palais Royal, Galerie Mouvances, Place des Vosges, Nîmes, Biarritz ...

Main exhibitions abroad:

Bruges, London, New York, Barcelona, Padua, Beverly Hills, Monaco, Riccione, Lausanne, Ferrara, Frankfurt, Dornbirn, Shanghai, Wassenaar ...

A book :

Entitled Stetbay - Matière, collection of her abstract works published in 2005 by T & A Editions.