Le grand pavot de l'Himalaya, 2016

Chesca  

Born in Quebec, in the Saguenay Fjord, in the most beautiful village in the world, Sainte-Rose-du-Nord, the fjord is naturally found in the background of many of her paintings. At the age of 21, she met the man who would guide her life. With him, she went to live first in Quebec, then in Montreal and finally in France, where she has lived for 42 years. A teacher, she worked with her students on the plastic arts, a subject that she particularly appreciated, because the sessions allowed her to express herself through child labor. It was only when he arrived in Milly-la-Forêt that his own life began to assert itself and that the need to develop his personal work took on its full dimension. It was then that she chose the name "Chesca", diminutive of "Francesca", to sign her works of artist which, at the beginning, were collages. Subsequently, she learned to use all mediums, from pastel to watercolor, including charcoal, to end up with oil painting which became her preferred mode of expression. His approach is inspired by intimate facts such as the observation of the movements of his grandchildren going up and down the Puiseaux stairs in a frantic race and also artistic and literary influences including two artists who have had a very present influence in his work. : Joseph Beuys and Jean Cocteau who were the subjects in his spaces in symmetry with the characters. The philosopher Nietzsche, for his part, gave meaning to a whole series of paintings and his philosophy is often part of his recent work on the theme "instant". She almost always works on several paintings simultaneously, which leads to composing series with symmetries and color casts. Instinctively and emotionally, she looks for bright, strong, deep colors. In front of the blank canvas, she begins by placing a solid vertical column, then she builds the painting around this column; invariably, a staircase invites itself into the composition and adds a feeling of elevation. She seeks to give the impression of movement in the depth of the painting and to provoke an interior reflection.