Donkey Look Painting

France-based and internationally spreaded, Benedicte Gelé paints the horses, expressiveness and emotions. Born in 1975 in the Parisian suburb, however, she’s never had a connexion with this animal until she started to ride them at the age of 15. She became a graphic designer without stopping her artistic research. Her curiosity and her desire to improve her skill, pushed her into learning by herself different techniques. She started to paint landscapes with first success in regional exhibitions with some first prizes. In 2004, her job as art director ended brutally as she was pregnant. This unemployment time was undeniably a sign for her to start something else. Gelé became a freelance graphic designer and an artist. "One part of me has always been attracted to horses without knowing why exactly. With the experience now, I would say that because this animal can express itself only with the expressivity of his body and the subtle language of his head, it made me sensitive to his emotions. All this process was unconscious. Now I can add that I realized that all these expressions I put in my horses were also my own inner emotions. Those that I was not aware of, that I hid deep inside me." Horses are the pretext, paint is the means of expression to express her emotions. Benedicte Gelé started to paint horses with a figurative expression as it was very natural for her. Except that she’s refused to keep this style. Inside her, there was much more than just the representation of the animal, something more personal that Gelé hadn’t find out yet. The horse is taken as a body with round shapes, bones, angles that reminds her nude lessons at school. She’s chosen the horse but it could have been a female model as they share common points. Year after year, the line took the central part of her art as a common thread with the powerful black chalk she always kept. The graphic designer in her is never very far away and kept influencing her work. She is also an explorer when it comes to technique and Gelé always tries new mediums to keep a kind of freshness, have infinite possibilities and choice of expression in her work. Her art is rich in texture, contrast and uses complementary color palettes blended together. Her horses became more abstract as well with just the essential to express the movement and the expressivity. A kind of semi-abstract painting where the animal remains in the lines and the emotional in the core of her art.