Anne Turlais

Anne Turlais is a French painter and printmaker. She lives and works in Cabrerets, a village in the Lot valley in south-west France, where she keeps her studio-gallery a few steps from the Pech-Merle cave.

She painted her first picture at fourteen, the dovecote on her parents’ farm, as a gift for her dying grandfather. Of that first painting she writes, “In giving, I was given.” For fourteen years she then searched on her own, with no art school and nature as her only teacher. At seventeen, a short stay in London introduced her to Turner, her first artistic encounter. Since then she has painted “what cannot be seen but exists powerfully, within us and around us”, around three axes, light, space and openness.

Around 1990 she learned engraving with Maryon Mudd, then intaglio printing in Tanguy Garric’s studio in Paris. She works in mezzotint, drypoint, aquatint, burin and woodcut, almost always in black ink, and she has made several artist’s books, among them engravings for Éditions Fata Morgana. She also paints in oil, on canvas and on paper.

In late 2014 she began painting with her finger on an iPad. She sees a kinship between the finger tracings left in the Pech-Merle cave tens of thousands of years ago, the engraver’s point an...

Self-taught in painting, with nature as her only teacher
Engraving with Maryon Mudd, around 1990
Intaglio printing, Tanguy Garric’s studio, Paris, around 1990

Journées des Ateliers d’Artistes d’Occitanie (open studio), Atelier-galerie Artwave, Cabrerets, France, 2026
Secret de Jardin (two-artist exhibition), Salle Capitant, Mairie du 5e, Paris, France, 2026
L’Arbre de Vie, artist’s book presentation, Festival Quartier du Livre, Mairie du 5e, Paris, France, 2026
Quercy Arts (guest of honour), Église des Cordeliers, Gourdon, France, 2025
L’Arbre de Vie, Salle Capitant, Mairie du 5e, Paris, France, 2025
Pure Déco invite les arbres d’Anne Turlais, Pure Déco, Toulouse, France, 2024
Matière subtile (solo exhibition), Librairie Calligramme, Cahors, France, 2024
Mai artistique, Salle des fêtes, Espédaillac, France, 2023
Editions of Anne Turlais, 99 rue La Fayette, Paris, France, 2022
13e Plurielles des Arts (group exhibition), Salle Balène, Figeac, France, 2021
Les Quatre Éléments (solo exhibition), Toulouse and Paris, France, 2019
Aubes (solo exhibition), Donjon de Bassoues, Bassoues, France, 2018
365 jours d’Art, parts 3 and 4 (solo exhibition), Galerie Artes, Paris, France, 2018
365 jours d’Art, parts 1 and 2, Galerie Artiempo, Toulouse, France, 2017
Paysages habités (solo exhibition), Galerie Ankh’art, Lavaur, France, 2017
365 jours au présent (solo exhibition), Galerie Beauvoir, Paris, Fran...