What inspired you to create artwork and become an artist? (events, feelings, experiences, etc.)
I have always been drawing.
This attraction to art naturally led me towards a baccalaureate in fine arts, supplemented by various evening courses at the Beaux-Arts de Lyon, which allowed me to pursue a career as a stylist-designer for various design companies. silk.
Personal artistic practice really took place during the health crisis. I picked up the brushes again.
Being lucky enough to live in the countryside and have a garden, in 2020, when confinement started, it was peak flower season. My husband, the photographer Philippe Clerc, also an Artmajeur artist, took great pleasure in photographing them and I took great pleasure in reproducing his photos on the canvas.
What is your artistic background, the techniques and subjects you have experimented with to date?
Floral paintings:
After a career as a textile designer-stylist for various silk companies throughout a professional life, a subject emerged: The floral theme which has historically inspired textile work in general and Lyon silk in particular. Life in a rural environment and a naturalist photographer spouse developed this attraction for working on the beauties of nature, between the botanical illustration of Pierre-Joseph Redouté, the “Raphaël of flowers”, and the modernism of Georgia O'Keeffe .
Nude paintings:
Since Antiquity, draperies have been used as a stylistic practice in the representation of the body to enhance or to hide the forms. Draped Nudes, my new series of paintings, reconsiders this classic subject of painting through “photographic” framing. With a modest sensuality, they break with classicism while exploring the codes of this classicism through tones and poses. Show the body or hide it? Today we could think that the subject is no longer guilty, this would undoubtedly ignore the censorship of classic works which is still current.
These draped and fragmented nudes remind us that the body is the refuge of identity, this identity subject to so many questions. No doubt this is why the nude questions painters so much.
What are the 3 aspects that differentiate you from other artists, making your work unique?
Attention to detail and precision as well as a photographic vision in framing.
Where does your inspiration come from?
Of course, nature!
What is your artistic approach? What visions, sensations or feelings do you want to evoke in the viewer?
Today freed from all constraints, I paint for color, shadow and light. The artistic creations of recent decades have discredited emotion in favor of the intellect but I dare to imagine that beauty is found within emotion and that emotion is revealed in beauty. Guided by the poetry and sensuality of bodies and flowers, my painting is ultimately only the manifesto of the beauty of the world and the arts, a contemplative pause to reconnect the link between the arts and emotion, to please and to move undoubtedly remaining fundamentals of artistic expression.
What is the process of creating your works? Spontaneous or with a long preparatory process (technique, inspiration from art classics or other)?
I paint from the photos of my photographer husband.
I admire classical painting, drapes and chiaroscuros, hence the idea for my series of draped nudes, always based on photos of my husband.
Do you use a particular working technique? if yes, can you explain it?
I use oil paint a bit like gouache, using turpentine like water. I smooth my colors and often paint with fine brushes.
Are there any innovative aspects in your work? Can you tell us which ones?
Perhaps a photographic vision thanks to the square format.
Do you have a format or medium that you are most comfortable with? if yes, why ?
I paint in oil on canvas, usually in a square format.
Oil paint dries very slowly allowing me to mix colors on the canvas.
Where do you produce your works? At home, in a shared workshop or in your own workshop? And in this space, how do you organize your creative work?
At home, in the bedroom of one of my sons, a room which is either a workshop or a bedroom depending on his visits. I paint almost every afternoon while watching films or series.
Does your work lead you to travel to meet new collectors, for fairs or exhibitions? If so, what does it mean to you?
My husband and I go to painting or photography exhibitions and we interact with many artists.
How do you imagine the evolution of your work and your career as an artist in the future?
I would like to find more opportunities to exhibit (and sell) but painting is part of my life.
What is the theme, style or technique of your latest artistic production?
I'm moving towards flowers that are a little more abstract thanks to the framing.
Can you tell us about your most important exhibition experience?
If this is the pictorial experience that has had the greatest impact on me, it is not an exhibition but a visit to the studio of the painter Alain Pouillet, a talented self-taught artist.
If it is my own experience, the joint exhibition with my husband mixing photography and painting.
If you could create a famous work in the history of art, which one would you choose? And why ?
Gustave Caillebotte’s parquet planers. For the light, the elegance of the bodies, the social subject and the photographic framing.
If you could invite any famous artist (dead or alive) to dinner, who would it be? How would you suggest he spend the evening?
Picasso! For its importance in art history.
At home, with family, my husband, my sons and their partner would not forgive me for not being invited with Picasso for a good meal, beef bourguignon and gratin dauphinois, I quite like cooking.
Olimpia Gaia Martinelli
