Leda and the Swan, tribute to Gustave Moreau

2014
Acrylic on linen canvas
200 x 110 cm
Sold

Tribute to Gustave Moreau

I have chosen to revisit the works of great Masters, naked women painted by men, not just any men : Sandro Botticelli, Gustave Moreau, Paul Gauguin, Gustave Courbet…
Each of these well known painters have changed how women are perceived. They have, each one in his own time, created a new vision of woman and an innovative pictural approach.

I did not want languid bodies, awaiting, offered, women in a passive attitude, virgins covered with a pile of tissues, angels… heroins of mythologies…

I wanted to represent bodies of women alive, present, carnal…
I have «matured» this subject for a year, from the choice of each painting to the style of representation…

I have already worked on women as a subject, my women surfers :
the first ones I have tattooed, symbolising Life to me, the freedom of these women surfing on the waves, mastering the tumultuous ocean, alive, image of the ancestral woman, original, contemporary, joyful, a warrior, in harmony with explosive Nature.

This time I have chosen bodies of naked women likely to represent all women, from ancestral to modern, from androgynous to pulpy.

 

I love the Aspara sculptures in the Khmer temple of Angkor, Cambodia, voluptuous, carnal, simply beautiful ; I am moved whenever I see them, a pleasant emotion, an apeasement.
They radiate an accepted femininity, tranquil, a great presence without struggle : «I am this woman… I live, I am alive… I accept myself as I am…»

The title of my exhibition «The Untouchables» came to me as these accomplished, «perfect», art works seem to me just that : untouchable.

But my sensitivity as an artist and as a woman prevailed.
And I wanted to confront these masterpieces.
How to paint these women ?
How to transform them ? in 2014.

As I love Hugo Pratt’s work, especially his water colours, I have taken the liberty to interpret his comic strip style paintings, black and white backgrounds… with a few variations.

 

I wanted to change the perception of how these artists are perceived ;
with my tattoos, I wanted to softly touch these female bodies, to create a «meskin», tender, powerful, harmonious, voluptuous, sensitive…
reflexion of the most profound.

I want to pay hommage to women.
Woman has been around since the beginning of times too… :))
A large part of humanity… and many of us are living in this world under circumstances similar to the Untouchables in India ??
Often very violent circumstances.
Tattoos to remind us that some women have been tattooed for painful reasons, politics… announcing death, such as in the concentration camps, or on the other hand characteristic personal and positive signs claimed by tribes…

Transforming these tattoos into lace, into small dots, various small inoffensive patterns… as an act of reparation…
I absolutely want to respect the sacred signs of all the people of the World, and have developed my own personal tattoos. No reference to anything else :
I just wanted to create an impression of beauty, of a precious body,
the naked woman but protected by her tattoos, like a reflection of the inside, of the profoundness of being… feminine.

And I have let my unconsciousness and my emotions express themselves.
I also wanted to tattoo a mannequin, just for the beauty of it,
as an amusement.