Collage, Circa 2022

Frédérique Lanquetin  

I discovered my vocation for art one morning while preparing a doctorate on the world of funerary science. During a four-hour interview with two cemetery caretakers, where I felt transported into the novel of the old man and the sea, painting seized me. I embarked on a quest for color.

It was nevertheless necessary to complete the thesis, striving to achieve an impossible objectivity.

When I had to write the preface to this work, I wanted to give the reader the opportunity to criticize me. I tried to make the subjective component of my research understandable, to refer readers to my personality as the key.

This five-line paragraph became the starting point for my first novel, which was followed by two others in different genres, including science fiction. I also trained in astrology and tarot, a practice that allowed me to approach the truest part of the human being: their soul. Paradoxically, for some, these were also years of intense scientific reading, particularly in mathematics.

Covid had a decisive influence. After years of artistic seclusion, dedicated solely to writing/reading, painting, and astrology, I started working in a Berlin daycare center when contact restrictions were lifted. The children's little fantasy world unleashed an incredible wave of inspiration—full of hope and play. A series of drawings was born along a poetic thread—like a fairy tale.

This experience revolutionized my artistic practice, which until then had too often been focused on the search for meaning, alongside the discovery of improvisational theater, which I have practiced ever since. Its methods now run through my painting in search of joy.

Finally, I can add that I do not use AI to imagine or paint, and do not wish to do so in the future.