Caroline Vicquenault's paintings are inhabited by multiple figures drawn from her immediate environment. This personal pantheon of women and men close to her also includes a few pets. The artist undertakes a slow process of portraiture, striving to best represent the expression of each individual while transporting her subjects to phantasmagorical environments.
Faces and bodies are inscribed in colored fields freed from the motif, on living surfaces in which the painting is fully experienced. It is then a subtle balance that operates, the mastery of the portrait responds to the surprise of overflowing backgrounds often to the point of covering the figures themselves. Caroline Vicquenault's painting, whether done in oil on canvas or on paper, works in concert with figuration and abstraction, one serving
invariably the other in multiple back and forths.

Artist Documents Network