Valérie Depadova

Valerie retains peaceful images from her childhood in Bou Haroun on the Algerian coast. From an early age, she drew, painted and sculpted. Being an artist was evident, natural, and a need. Her father brought back objects that fascinated her from his military missions in the heart of Africa. They inspired her pictorial work with surprising ethnic connotations. The African continent bequeathed her the wealth of a palette of shimmering colours and a candid and spontaneous expression.
Valerie mixes acrylic, pastel, ink, pencil and collage. Canvas, magazines and old encyclopaedias are reworked, reprinted, sometimes beat up, wrinkled, painted and assembled in a patchwork of colours. Words are captured, isolated from their original context and find a different meaning.
Colour is brutally worked with a knife. Characters gradually come to life on an abstract background and evolve slowly through the paintings.
Africa is an inexhaustible source of inspiration for Valerie; the stylized human forms, their disproportions, the protruding or hunched lines, the characters’ often asymmetrical and dynamic postures, all reminiscent of African sculpture. This personal and rhythmic approach to anatomy brings about a vitality and strength that illuminates each composition.
The characters’ eyes within a triangle of faces, observe time and movement. From this perspective, Valerie connects art to the most important events of life giving her creations a social dimension. Through her evocatively titled works, the artist invites us to join her in her reflection on our predatory world.
Valerie observes human beings with great fondness and wishes to convey a message of love, gentleness and joy. She seems to remember that there can be warmth at the heart of winter.