Bigaignon

In May 2020, during the first confinement, the Franco-British artist Catherine Balet found serenity by the pond located at the bottom of her garden. Time has stopped and the stillness of the frogs soothes her. The silent beauty of this favorite place becomes her laboratory. Catherine Balet photographs every day, the transformation of colors, lines and volumes that fluctuate with the weather. Everything is a wonder. From the shimmering colors of spring to the different shades of gray of winter, the artist observes the changes in their chromatic field, creates a logbook of the diversity and evolution of the cycle of the seasons and captures the specificity of the transformations of light, the graphics of leaves and the geometry of branches.

True to her singular style, in an incessant back and forth between painting and photography, Catherine Balet superimposes shots, playing with transparency, creating a pictorial accumulation in the form of a digital collage, all on a base of paintings, themselves inspired by fragmented and abstracted shots of plants taken with a microscope and photographed in her studio. The touch of the brush, the gesture of the hand underline the relief which transpires and contributes to the richness of the material.

This call of Nature, at the same time powerful and benevolent, complex and harmonious invites to rethink the world in these times of crisis and to take height while putting in perspective the infinitely small.