Martine Chaperon

A native of Grenoble, the artist was born in 1953 with pencil in hand, much as others are born with a musical ear. Painting seemed as obvious, soothing and essential as that of the simple act of breathing. So she began her training at the School of Fine Arts in Grenoble, which confirmed her vocation. Martine entitled her first painting ""Birth"" and thus began her life as an artist. She then was lucky enough to make art her career. Touched by the works of Michelangelo (Italian painter and sculptor of the Renaissance), Rodin (French sculptor of the nineteenth century) and his pupil Camille Claudel, the artist has a passion for feminine curves and the strength of male musculature. This sensitivity would lead her to meet one of her peers, Franta, who would guide her through her work of the nude.

Today, Martine embraces the chronicles of Anne Schwartzweber, where she relates to the creative process: ""For [her] art is primarily a means of expression. It is an ideal mediator between inside and out. [It] allows one to organize an inner world of often intense emotions by “embodying"" them. The important thing for [her] is to externalize or literally remove all these emotions. [She] needs to somehow touch them, to look specifically at them, and to do this [she looks] for a way to create a channel and to “give birth"" to them.”

Indeed, the artist likes to represent an emotion until exhaustion, in different formats, using different materials and different techniques. She works materials and transparency in layers using acrylic and vinyl binders and, depending on her moods, uses dry or oil pastels, watercolour and graphite, which are particularly suited to nude work. Martine does not seek to represent the body to perfection. She shows its wounds and scars as evidence of life in order to perfect beauty. She finds nothing complacent in the nude, nothing shocking either, just ""a feeling of the soul.""