Brigitte Dravet

I am Brigitte Dravet, a visual artist based in Toulon, on the French Riviera, a stretch of Mediterranean coast whose light has accompanied me, day after day, for as long as I can remember. Creating has always been obvious to me, a language in its own right. Raised by a watercolorist mother and an architect father, I grew up surrounded by color, line, and space.
My work is a dialogue between light and matter. My paintings, inspired by the sea and sky, explore minimalist, poetic landscapes; the great masters of Asian art call this impulse "the breath," the one that animates nature in its truth. Today, I don't create despite my life. I create with it, from it. Two practices share one soul: abstract painting and upcycling sculpture. In both, I search for the same thing, revealing the presence hidden within matter.
My paintings are built in successive layers, with a palette knife, a sponge, by hand: mineral pigments, gold leaf, textures that catch morning light differently than evening light. My sculptures are born from recovered materials, shop mannequins, antique chandeliers, forgotten fragments, transformed through gold leaf, patina, and marble powder. This is not recycling: it is alchemy.
On the back of each canvas, a ritual gesture...

Following in the footsteps of my architect father, I spent my childhood drawing, coloring, painting; I found in manual activities a refuge and a way to express myself. Deep down, I always wanted to be an artist, and creation imposed itself on me very quickly.
After studying fine arts, I explored photography, video, and painted stage sets, working on immense canvases for live performance. To transport them, I would cut them apart and mount them on separate panels. What began as a practical solution became my signature: my polyptychs, diptychs, triptychs, and quadriptychs, now form one of the hearts of my work.
At the same time, I worked for fifteen years as a sophrologist and relaxation therapist. That practice deeply nourished my relationship to creation: calm, listening, and awareness of the present moment became the silent pillars of my artistic world.
My studio is in Toulon, a few hundred meters from the sea. It overflows with pigments, canvases, brushes covered in turquoise, secondhand shop mannequins, antique chandeliers, plaster busts waiting for their gold. Every object here has a story; every corner carries the trace of a work in progress, an intuition still searching for its form. This is the place where my paintings are b...

Exhibition Salon Talents of women 83 La Garde from March 28 to 3, 2024

Exhibition Salon "Variations féminines" Hôtel départemental du Var, Toulon. du 8 au 15 Mars