Françoise Bellière | Contemporary Artist: Artworks & Biography

After two courses devoted to knowledge and learning about graphic and pictorial arts, the painter artist from Brussels began her career in 1984. Dividing her time between creation and teaching, she opened six years later the private Françoise Bellière Workshops. In 2004, she left her native Belgium to establish herself in the south of France, in Provencal Drôme. There, Françoise set up the Cheval de Couleurs association, which takes the form of a workshop dedicated to learning about contemporary painting techniques, mainly reserved for a public of adults living in rural areas.“After a clear attraction to figuration and portraits, the Enlightenment influences of William Turner (1775-1851), the fluid work of Zao Wou-Ki (1920-2013) and the abstract landscapes of Arthur Grosemans (1906-1995) completely changed my outlook on painting”. It is with these words that Françoise explains her artistic U-turn, which would lead to the birth of an entirely different pictorial practice from her original activity. Since then, the painter founds the essentials of her artistic research on light and atmosphere, two inseparable elements of her work representing landscapes.Deeply attached to her home country whilst continually being inspired by her adoptive region, Françoise is able to admirably translate her emotions into the heart of her work. As such, through acrylic paints, enhanced by mixed techniques – walnut stain, pigments, pastels, charcoals, watercolours, etc. – the artist re-transcribes on her canvas the “furtive moments captured along North Sea beaches, in the open countryside of Belgium or Drôme hills at daybreak”.