Versailles II - Marie-Antoinette Artwork

She is a french artist, born in Paris (France). She currently lives and works in Montargis, near Paris. Both realistic and dreamlike, Cécile Duchêne Malissin’s painting implies some introspection. Characters or animals are shown in abstract settings or lush vegetation. Her works exude a powerful attraction and conveys reverie. They are bushy, free, imaginative compositions and a poetic and singular universe. Her portraits express a meditative abandonment and the richness of an inner life. Childhood, is also tackled and evokes the loss of innocence as well as facing the brutality of the world. The viewer is caught by the serious and mysterious gaze of her characters: who observes who, in this disturbing face-to-face? Relations to nature, to oneself and to others are questioned here. Working on paper or canvas, mixing different techniques (acrylic paint, oil pastels, graphite lead, collage and sometimes sewing...), the works thus created carry in them both a delicacy but also a certain strangeness. The relationship to the body and its fragility are evoked by transparencies which is conferred by a subtle game of collages mixed with acrylic. Memory, forgetfulness, transience of existence are suggested.