Nathalie Dumontier

Nathalie developed two passions in her youth : sports and painting. In the beginning she focused on sports (professional sports and lifeguarding), but after founding a family, she returned to her first love : painting.
While taking her daughter to a drawing class, she found herself enrolling in an adult program at the Museum of Fine Arts in Chartres where she discovered a sense of unparalleled freedom.
Exhibiting her first painting confirmed her decision: the need to create had become essential. In 2006 she left her job in order to devote herself entirely to her passion.
As she observes her children’s lifestyle, Natalie is surprised by the lack of real communication in the virtual world. The electronics discretely embedded in her work are nods to the modern life that she mocks.
Initially, her paintings were figurative, but gradually her painting became more and more abstract. Nathalie uses an acrylic knife to apply splashes of colour to the blank canvas. Once dry, she covers the canvas with oil painting that she chooses for its smoothness, at times adding material to give body, at other times working pigments diluted in water to give fluidity. The long drying time of oil paint allows for it to be worked over and over again. She scratches, scrapes and searches, constantly constructing, deconstructing and reconstructing. She plays determinedly with contrast, shadow and light.
Steeped in the atmosphere of Chartres, where she lives, Nathalie also works in stained glass, which allows her to develop her creativity and technique. In working with the glass she finds the same play of shadow and light, transparency and opacity that she develops in her painting. She brings the same subject matter to her stained glass windows as she does to her painting. The technique is different, but the approach is decidedly the same. And the two expressions are complementary...