Marianne Simonin
Kashi - 2009
Born 1962, France
Lives in London and travels regularly to India.
Art foundation in Poitiers 77 - 79
Mostly self-taught. Private tuition on drawing, composition and oil techniques in the studios of Antonella Piro and Zil Hoque.
Prince's School of Drawing, London, Shorditch.
Course on technique of pigments with Pip Seymour.
I have always been drawn towards Art that reflects human emotions, images that can move me, that can express what cannot be said in words. I am interested in the personality of people through their facial expression and in particularly their eyes, the only place in the body where you can see your own reflection. Therefore my work has remained mostly figurative; I have made several attempts at working abstraclty but it often seems to create a certain dryness that leaves me indifferent.
Artists that I admire and study are Goya, Lucien Freud, H.Craig Hanna, Marlene Dumas to name a few.
I enjoy taking photos of Nature as I can easily enter the composition and colour schemes. It is something that comes naturally to me and eventhough I have no photographic experience I like the spontaneity that it gives me, the instant image that manifests before my eyes. My camera often feels like a magnifying glass. Nature is full of sensuality and this is what I like to record in my work.
I love Art for the process of manifestation and destruction, the search of the unknown, the pleasure of "pulling out" images from the canvas, or words from the paper, but most of all for the constant "tuning in" with the higher forces of Nature, and the Universal creative energy. I use painting, poetry or photography as a language between myself and others, but knowing that internally the process is there all of the time.
I like to remain free with my subjects and compositions but when series manifest naturally, I enjoy the hidden message behind them and the intensity of my passions. It is "the secrets" behind each image or word that interest me, knowing what feeling triggered a particular poem or painting, the choice of titles, and the wider inner world that is always present within me.
I enjoy travelling to remote areas and I spend many days in silence, observing, absorbing while moving from place to place, or staying in contact with Nature.
link to CV
"Adios" - oil on canvas - 78.5 x 78.5cm.
Part of the series on past lives.
"Janitors of Lunacy" (detail) - oil on canvas
