Presentation of Annick CHENU

I am an autodidact painter.
I draw since I can handle a pen. Then I started to paint at 15 years old. I left brushes from 18 to 32 years old to explore dry pastels. I was inspired by landscapes's photography. When my mother died I go back to acrylic. During few years I was searching my way.
One day I went to a Miro's exhibiting : that was the trigger. I stopped painting and making mandalas to draw with ink on paper. Only brown, yellow and black for beginning. Then red and green. Blue came later on.
I quit National Education in 2005 to become a professional artist.
The writer and performer Luc Hazebrouck asked me to illustrate a story about the fight between a woman and the Death : "The crossing of the desert". I have to make a background to my drawings. I used dry pastels for it.
Since, I made the same for all my pictures.
Some people say that I am doing ethnic art, others find my picture zen. But for sure my drawings bring peace and joy to the spectators.

Artistic commitment

Two subjects intermixe in my drawings : movement and emotion.
Inspiration comes equally from a gesture (of a body or a calligraphy) or states o mind.
The overall pictures relate my story. I rediscover my life and my feelings when I look at my drawings. It, sometimes, amazes me !
When I have drawn the central subject, its partitioning and the ink run and pour according the gravity imposed by the lines's movements.
I put warm colours inside the figure or to indicate the lighting in more abstracted paintings.
Greens and blues complete the general effect of the picture.
Next comes the background made with pastels (dry or oiled) put in large blue or orange tint area layed out with fingers, stump, bruh. Several strata will be settled like this.
Lines, plotted around the subject, bring the movement.
Then I write the title which is, for me, part of the drawing

My search actually

Fascinated by the traces left by many civilizations I collect symboles, pictograms and callygraphies then I touch them up my way.