• “Life at canvas level…”
No doubt about it, right away the happy enthusiasm that makes Christine Vannier tick, the sincerity that she puts into her art and her unaffectedness hit you. It is often said that, for an artist, a work of art is an extension of one’s self, a projection of the way one sees the world, a real expression of one’s personal being. For Christine Vannier, artistic creation is above all a way of life, as natural and necessary as breathing in and out. So it’s easy to understand why Christine Vannier is not a conceptual artist. And, what is just as evident is the driving force behind her work. What is important for her and for her paintings is the possibility of escaping the mad rush of the world; it’s as if the artist knows, to paraphrase Schopenhauer, that art as a salutary illusion is one of the most pleasant mainstays for the soul.
The inspiration for her work comes from emotions rather than stories, and in parallel with this she hopes that those looking at her work will react with aesthetic emotions rather than a desire to analyze and discuss it.
She has thus naturally chosen abstract art, an excellent vector for pure sensitivity. Christine Vannier’s paintings are windows opening onto the imagination, deliberately offering room for interpretation so that those who view them may draw out the raw material for their own pictures and dreams.
Christine likes to think of her works as “living” paintings. Not just because the coats of colored glaze give them an organic quality and a vibrant density that only this painstaking traditional technique makes possible, but also because their existence is part of a kind of temporality. They are never quite the same, nor completely changed; they come alive - vibrate - depending on the transparent colorings in them, the weather, the time of day, the light and the mood we’re in when we look at them. Indeed, the happy soul who owns a painting by Christina Vannier has not acquired just one painting, but rather an infinite variety of paintings! Her pictures are an endless realm to be explored; little touches appear one day that you hadn’t noticed the day before; another day the effect of the light will again make it look different. So, are these paintings really “alive”? Whatever the case may be, they do have within them that “extra little piece of soul” which goes far beyond the straightforward harmony of composition, and which will seduce and astonish you for a very long time, just like a faithful friend.
And if colors are a language, the peaceful and luminous coloring of her works is a real marvel of communication. Even though the very crimson reds, the deep blues and the bright yellows are extremely powerful, her work cannot be called “exuberant”. It is very simple - particularly her larger works – without being minimalist, and is, on the contrary, very calm, inciting meditation and peacefulness.
Christine Vannier’s past experience as an architect has significantly contributed to her artistic technique. The “builder” in her has given her a robust sense of balance, structure and matter. Her technique features transparency, opaqueness and brightness; work with the palette knife, top coats scraped away to reveal what is underneath, various objects, such as cloth are sometimes included in her work… her paintings, like her polyptychs, are composed, textured, organized into volumes and into depth…..in other words, they are architectural.
From painting to painting the artist’s world develops, almost despite herself, as if “something was leftover from yesterday”, as she says, and in the time from night to day, a new painting is born, one which she knows nothing about yet, but hints of which guide her until its completion. Whilst the artist is implicated in the “making” of her work– concentrated on successful transparency, on composition– and without her being consciously aware of it, the sense of her work develops. And the artist only discovers this after having placed the finishing touches.
But, since a work of art must be alive, and must live with us, it is not complete until it has passed the “living-room test”, a sort of remarkable Darwinian test. Taking the painting out of the studio, immersing it in the exogenous environment of a friendly living room, and finally seeing whether it adapts well… this is an unusual test, the ultimate test. A test which gives a work of art a role which museums could never give it, that of a lifelong companion.
In another realm, Christine Vannier’s photographs provide you with both a sort of “humanism”, more easy to detect than in her abstract paintings, and her sense of architecture in some astonishing compositional parallels. Christine Vannier’s way of looking at things is benevolent and curious, as well as sensitive to atmospheres, places, and specific moments.
Biographical note
Born in Elbeuf, Normandy France, in 1954, Christine Vannier grew up in an atmosphere favorable to her emerging passion for art. As of an early age, she spent most of her time drawing. She began painting during her adolescent years when she discovered the power and magic of abstract painting, a great path for imagination. Even though she decided to study architecture - she obtained her State Diploma in Architecture (DPLG) in 1983 - she never stopped painting. Her work was exhibited for the first time in 1981 in the Galerie Casanova at the Palais Royal in Paris.
She left Paris and architecture behind at the end of the 1980s to settle in Brittany where the wild and mysterious landscapes appealed to her. Self-taught, she exhibits her work on a regular basis in France as well as elsewhere in the world, in China, Greece and the United States.
At present, she is married to a sailor, and works from both her Paris studio and her other studio which is very close to the Ocean in St Philibert, Brittany France.
She is now not only passionately involved in painting but equally enthusiastic about photography. Her magnificent, humanist, black and white landscapes can be viewed along with her paintings at the Village Royal in Paris, France. |
Philosophy Article #51449 - Artist #6382
