Marie-Pascale Engelmann | Contemporary Artist: Artworks & Biography

Marie-Pascale was born in Algeria to Andalusian parents, but her family left Africa for France when she was two. Nothing pointed her towards an artistic profession, and when it came time to choose a career, she decided to become a teacher, which she carried out for twenty-five years. From 1986 to 1995 taught throughout Africa (Gabon, Madagascar, Comoros....) and her memories are filled with the sounds, smells and colours. Introducing children to art only served to fuel her artistic curiosity, and at the age of forty, Marie-Pascale experienced a new beginning. She became a full-fledged artist and launched into her new life with passion. She has exhibited throughout the past ten years, and now lives and works in Strasbourg.\n The artist has developed an abstract universe in which figurative elements get lost. She combines acrylics with mixed media (ink, tar, walnut juice) on canvas or paper. Music accompanies her work, and she gives her works the titles of songs from groups heard in her workshop (Lou Reed, The Rolling Stones, The Doors...). Her artistic preferences lean towards contemporary art: the artists Antoni Tapies and Coignard (twentieth - twenty-first centuries) Miquel Barceló (Spanish painter) or Alechinsky (Belgian painter and printmaker).\n With great generosity, Marie-Pascale creates sensations on the canvas (olfactory, visual, auditory) that she has collected during her various trips, inviting the viewer to escape through her art. She draws her inspiration from her Andalusian roots and her African life. She creates colours with pigments and confronts them with the rough surface of sand or cement.\n Marie-Pascale sees the use of small formats a personal challenge, a way to tell a story in a literary way, rich and concise at the same time. Made of perennial or ephemeral strokes, her art revolves around a reflection on the vagaries of time. The artist wishes to freeze the immediacy of a moment by using simple, raw materials. Matter, in all its fragility, is the heart of her work.