Nicole Ortis-Bommarito

Nicole was born in the Algerian capital and arrived in Southern France at a young age. The self-taught artist trained with painters from the Marseilles School in order to gain the skills and knowledge needed to open her own ateliers in the Couvent Royal in Saint-Maximin-la-Sainte-Baume, in the Vars Region, in 1998. This is a space that is used both to create and to teach others to create.

Nicole studied the skill of using oil paint for a long time and today she has opted to use a mix of oil paint and acrylic for her canvases - the characteristics inherent in the drying process of acrylic paint fit the needs of the artist who moves quickly. Nicole is drawn to the emotion and poetry that emanate from a work of art, and she admires paintings by Amadeo Modigliani (1884-1920) or Michel Sementzeff (born in 1933) for the way they treat light and the singular atmosphere that comes from their creations.

Nicole's paintings are figurative and expressive, and they depict her state of mind and the kind of sensitivity that she likes to share with the public. Her main interest lies in the representation of the portraits of children, scenes of life and of the sea. She never makes sketches before starting to paint. She lets the painting express her gestures on the canvas in the moment and thus leaves room for the unexpected and unpredictable. By combining materials and transparencies, Nicole interprets her subjects softly and with a sense of harmony by integrating a part of herself; therefore, each canvas is a fragment of something the artist shares with the viewer who can then begin to write their own story.