Hortense Thibault Briffaut
is a completely self-taught French artist.
She did not learn in schools, but through
living, painting as one shouts, laughs or
cries, making mistakes and starting over.
Over and over again. In one of her other
lives, she was already a painter. Nature
was her playground, her refuge, her
subject.
Nature has always been her starting point,
like a calm and persistent obsession.
Between rounds of drinks and a few
dance steps, she returns to her brushes,
because painting has never really left her.
She uses acrylics, a lively, direct,
instinctive technique. A splash of colour
thrown in the face of the world, in the
service of a nature that has always been
t h e r e , s t r o n g , h a u n t i n g , f r a g i l e ,
magnificent.
In her latest series, NATURE vraiment
MORTE (Truly Dead Nature), Hortense
works with still lifes. Dead, but not quite.
Vegetables bleed, fruit cracks, colours
burst like wounds. It is unclear whether
this is a kitchen or a silent battlefield.
Something is being said here, whispered,
between beauty and unease, between
banality and gentle violence.
Her paintings still breathe. Sometimes
they creak. Sometimes they scream,
almost inaudibly. They are alive but mourn
the suffering of the world.
Like her.