“Our first learning of the world, before language, is flavors, colors, materials”

I have always painted mineral landscapes. Rocks, cliffs, strata, cuts. In the same spirit, a few years ago I started painting oyster shells. When you make a meal of oysters, I find that what’s left is magnificent, like a contemporary art installation, a landscape on the plate. Each form is different, it is the multiplication of the same without anything ever being identical.

Little by little, I became interested in other remains: chop bones, langoustine carcasses, artichoke leaves… I called them ” landforms “, as in La Fontaine’s fable: “In the past the city rat invited the country rat, in a very civil manner, to ortolan reliefs…” I have been painting food for four years now – it stems from a fascination with food, and what happens when we eat, which dates from childhood.

I was lucky to grow up in the countryside, in the Loir valley, in a village house which was a paradise for me. There was a large apple and pear orchard that my father cultivated, and a magnificent vegetable garden that made me happy. We are so dependent on the way we experience the world.

Our first learning of the world, before language, is flavors, colors, materials. We treat artists as eternal children, but it is because we have the privilege of being able to remain connected to the world of sensations, whereas many people feel obliged to detach themselves from it in order to “becoming an adult”.

A very sensual art

This vegetable garden had a big influence on me: I spent a lot of time there, I picked radishes, parsley, carrots, raspberries… It still exists today, my mother is happy there. It is a land that has gone through the ages, which has been in the family since the 14th^ecentury… There is an anchor, a different relationship to time. My mother was born in Argentina – a little American, a little Scottish, a little Belgian.

She is a very good cook, who prepares dishes with varied influences: a delicious carrot cake, Christmas pudding, the large New Year’s ham studded with cloves… In my childhood, there was her kitchen, but also that of my grandmother’s cook – a woman with an execrable character, who fascinated me, told me about the liberation of Paris and sent me to fetch herbs from the garden.

This is how my culinary culture was formed. I love to eat and I cook often. I prepare casserole dishes, I like it when it simmers while I paint and the smells that spread in the studio. I like this atmosphere and the prospect of a shared dish, like this olive can, the recipe of which was sent to me by a printer friend, also a fan of pots.

For me, painting is close to cooking, the pleasure of seeing and playing with textures is of the same order as that of eating and feeling. It’s very sensual, it’s a thought that translates into gesture, which becomes an object, a thickness, which has taste, which envelops and transports.