Aude Azaïs - The Dordogne Valley - Pastel

Aude AZAÏS
The Dordogne Valley
Pastel on paper (framed under glass)
H. 50 cm; W. 65 cm
Signed lower right - 2023

It was after seeing a small reproduction of Renoir that in her early youth, Aude Azaïs developed her sensitivity to painting. "Through my eyes and through my heart, I understood this language". Growing up, she followed her family's movements by heading to Haiti, where the incredibly pure light inspired her. From Paris to Haiti, from Paris to Madrid or from Puerto Rico to Florence, each trip shaped her. With landscapes and unique lights in different corners of the globe, she enriched her eye before beginning her artistic studies. She worked in Florence, engraving, painting and sculpture in the high places of the Renaissance. The harmony of Tuscan nature seduced her, the altarpieces on wood and the art of fresco transported her into the clouds. From Madrid she remembers the Velázquez at the Prado, the warm light. Then the great training at the Beaux-Arts in Paris after which she gave sixteen years of teaching at the Ateliers du Carrousel (Museum of Decorative Arts) while practicing painting. Since 2010 she has devoted herself exclusively to this pure passion in her studio in Marseille. If at eighteen, Aude Azaïs is passionate about Greek art, her taste gradually comes closer to the contemporary era. She does not lock herself in a school, quite the contrary. She cites the Italian artist Giorgio Morandi; the painter of the new school of Paris, Serge Poliakoff or David Hockney. The painting of Marc Rothko, where the vibration of the color is carried as if by a breath. These different inspirations and the places where ancient art is exhibited ultimately form a large corpus of which each observed element ends up sculpting the vision. Creation obviously sees itself sculpted. The use of pastel, which is an almost pure pigment, allows Aude Azaïs to express herself with breadth. The color comes to life, energetically, and rises in a burst and all the desired intensity. Her work in oil brings a little more gravity, a little more exteriority, especially through the more imposing formats. However, it is always the same pictorial adventure, built over the course of the creative process: "Just by applying a color, the emotion is there and the magic works and one calls for the other: the purple calls for the yellow which calls for a pale and tender pink which itself calls for a fresh green...". She does not differentiate between abstraction and figuration, everything is a pretext for painting. Abstraction has a preference in her work because it undoubtedly brings to light a little more of what has never been seen, which is in line with her taste for discovery. The composition springs forth, carried by the dynamism of shapes and colors in motion or it is constructed through stable and restful forms. "Many things inspire me, the color itself obviously, a poem, a sound..." This work is part of a series commissioned in 2023 from the artist, to represent the Périgord in his own way. This commission takes place within the framework of "Regard sur le Périgord" which is a summer exhibition inviting an artist each year to set their eyes on our territory. Aude Azaïs devoted herself almost entirely to visions of the gardens of Marqueyssac, in the heart of the valley of great historical sites. Our pastel, centered on the greens of the trimmed box trees, is not a tourist or postcard vision, but an appreciation of the place and the magical universe of this garden with the artist's eye.