My paintings depict lush and exuberant rainforest environments whose extravagant vegetation acts as an allegory for the mind, mapping a journey of self-discovery and reconnecting with its roots. In an increasingly technological and virtual world, I question human’s synergy with nature, and I want to raise awareness of this interference and disconnection with these natural experiences. With a deliberate explosion of bold colours and technical innovation, I mix supposedly unmixable painting materials together, creating an immersive, intricate and visually seductive vegetal world.

My previous work focused on semi-abstract minimalist paintings evoking the natural environment, focusing on micro and macro perspectives. However, the first confinement of 2020 prompted introspection and incited a significant re-thinking of my practice. I started shifting towards figuration. Upon returning from a trip to the Seychelles, I found that in the confinement of lockdown, I couldn’t help but remember these wild rainforest images, which triggered my desire for escape and unveiled repressed childhood memories. As a result, I produced new works that showed luxuriant systems of plants, trees and flora, echoing the complexity of my tangled mind with its faded memories.

The metaphoric potential of my relationship to the natural world facilitated me to interrogate personal issues of identity loss and recovery. Born and raised as French, I grew up with ignored Peruvian origins. When this history re-emerged as an adult, I’ve had to reconcile my mixed identity. At the same time, I’ve noticed that my strong colour palette references Peruvian folklore, particularly the Quechua Weavings, with their narrative purpose and reminds me of my life in Peru during the mid-1970s. The Amazonian rainforest also belongs to these foggy memories and is undoubtedly the real unconscious foundation of my compulsive attraction to overgrown tangle.

I intentionally create paintings that are not botanically, geographically, or seasonally correct. Instead, I prefer to mine symbolic relationships in my compositions and I make use of a wide range of textural motifs, forcing water and solvent-based painting and drawing materials to bond together on various unconventional supports. Building up my rainforests progressively and organically, I force tension amongst control and chance. Each plant, tree or plant metamorphoses from the silent witness of the passing time into a loud and vibrant subject infused with human feelings and emotions. I strive for a balance with the overwhelming but fragile in our natural world.