From stone to paper
“Pierre*, a word, a name that I have always liked to pronounce, objects that I have always liked to look at, touch, own. Dream stones, stones to dream. Stones that contain a beauty that is an inexhaustible support for creation and dreams. A simple pebble is enough to make me dream and draw for hours. Not all stones are good for dreaming, those that are too beautiful mean nothing to me. I am interested in the meanders, the reliefs, the incisures. I go on an adventure of images, without premeditation. Sometimes I meet a dancer whirling or a woman running at top speed. It is the wandering of the discovery of forms when drawing. »
*In French, « Pierre » means Pierre as well as stone
From stone to paper
“Pierre*, a word, a name
that I have always liked to pronounce, objects that I have always liked to look at, touch, own. Dream stones, stones to dream. Stones that contain a beauty that is an inexhaustible support for creation and dreams. A simple pebble is enough to make me dream and draw for hours. Not all stones are good for dreaming, those that are too beautiful don’t inspire me. I am interested in the meanders, the reliefs, the incisures. I go on an adventure of images, without premeditation. Sometimes I meet a dancer whirling or a woman running at top speed. It is the wandering in the discovery of the forms when one draws. »
*In French, « Pierre »means Pierre as well as stone
It was from 2007 that RMC, wishing to renew its repertoire of forms, begins to use its collection of stones and fossils as a source of inspiration. The first figures thus emerge from an insignificant little pebble in Traces de vol, an artist’s book that marks the beginning of a new cycle of production. This way in which RMC creates its universe by dialoguing with mineral supports, this state of « dream » as she says, interests researchers in neuro-art and prehistorians who see in it the mental processes at the origin of the first artistic gestures, by interaction between the artists’ mental universe and the forms emerging from the walls of their shelters, their caves or the stones they carved. Artists’ preoccupations, their techniques, have since changed a great deal, but the process has remained fundamentally the same, particularly in many of the creations of so-called abstract painters.
The engraved stones of the La Marche and Fadets caves
Lussac-les-Chateaux.
A long time ago, at the time of Lascaux, artists who lived not far from there, in the Vienne valley, engraved their lives, their emotions, their dreams on thousands of stones. These works that they bequeathed to us constitute the oldest, and one of the most extraordinary, pinacoteca of the world heritage.
Over the centuries, these stones have turned into an almost indecipherable rebus, but this long journey through time has not destroyed their mystery or their beauty. 14,000 years later, another artist, crazy about drawing and color, passionate about prehistory, succeeded, through the magic of her line and the strength of her dream, in transcending the energy of these stones, and bringing them back to life. She brings them to our gaze, after a year of face to face, spent in residence at the museum of Lussac-les-Châteaux, the city of Poitou where the site is located.
Art is a long chain, a hundred times broken, but always renewed.
Dream stones.
As a goal to achieve.
Lussac stones are not easy. These are not rough stones. I am torn between the desire to decipher them and the desire to draw them, between the desire to follow and understand each line and the desire to abstract myself from it. The richness of certain stones allows me to make many versions, all different from each other. My pencil drawing, rapid and uninterrupted, brings the engraved lines back to life.
I then bring these sketches back to my studio where its become, in ink, pastel or gouache, another vision of the stones, my vision, since I work on the existing and the non existing, on what I see and what I invent. With my own superimposed lines, I rediscover the confusion of signs, the indecipherable and yet perfectly coherent image that time has not erased and which plunges me back into the mystery of the drawing-writing of the engraved stones.
