Françoise Amelot
The French Perspective: Contemporary Art from France
June 27 - July 17, 2009
Reception:
Thursday July 2, 2009 6-8 PM
Press Release
Displaying a love for nature alongside a will to protect it, award-winning French painter Françoise Amelot captures scenes with a wonderful impressionistic realism. Her modestly-sized canvases burst forth with beautiful bouquets, lush gardens and landscapes, and quiet still-lifes steeped in rich light. Her brushwork and handling of paint display an unassuming yet poised confidence in composition.
Amelot’s work is unique in this stillness, an inviting aura that allows audiences to place themselves within the scene. Clear, calm waters reflect surrounding foliage and crisp azure skies that span to the limits of sight. In many paintings, one will discover an unpretentious environmental message, where clearings in the vegetation give way to discarded rusting cans or other refuse. Yet she gives the same aesthetic attention to litter as she would any leaf, cloud or stone, but with the awareness that this is an unwelcome guest in the natural scenery.
Amelot grew up and settled outside of Paris, deriving much of her artistic inspiration from long walks in the French countryside.
Artist Statement
I grew up near Paris, admiring the forests, the valleys with their small streams, the monuments and small villages that belong to the region. Nowadays, I find my subjects during long promenades during which I seek the soul of the area. For the last thirty years, one of my serious concerns, in art and in life, has been the protection of the environment. The newly polluted landscapes call out to me and shock me. Antoine De Saint Exupéry in said "We do not inherit the earth, we borrow it from the future generations" and this sentiment moves me greatly. In painting, I try to tell part of the history and risks of mankind. But I try to make it clear that the rolling skies, sun and natural life struggling for survival are not without hope.
Invitation to the exhibition
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Artists in this exhibition
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