Essence
Fabienne Verdier, L'essence des Fleurs, 2002, ink, pigments and varnish on canvas
“Every single thing in the world around us is made up of atoms in motion, molecules in flux. To capture this constant “becoming” — this is what drives me on and drives me mad.”
I discovered Verdier’s work for myself quite by accident (as far as there are any accidents) and it was love at first sight. Her process is based in Chinese calligraphy but she is inspired by everything - poetry, music, math, philosophy, and above all movement.
“Movement is the essence of existence, of what it means to be real in the world.”
Fabienne Verdier, Peinture du 8 mars, Incandescence serie, 2009, ink, pigments and varnish on canvas
As a young woman In 1982, she felt constrained by the curriculum at the Ecole Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Toulouse which focused rigidly on academic painting. She sought a different perspective at the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute - only to find it equally limited, this time by the mandate of Socialist Realism.
Not easily deterred, Verdier persevered in the near impossible - she found masters of traditional Chinese art who at that time were suppressed by the Cultural Revolution, persuading them to guide her on a 10 year journey of learning the ancient discipline and philosophy of calligraphic painting.
Fabienne Verdier, Rameau d'hiver animé par le ciel (Winter branch animated by the sky), 2004, "Essence végétale serie, ink, pigments and varnish on canvas
She says,
The masters gave me a piece of white paper and a brush, and told me to paint my spiritual view of tree branches… They explained that there’s [sic] no good looking at a tree, or a landscape. You must, by force of contemplation, be at one with the thing you are painting.
More about this extraordinary painter and her work is on her website, https://fabienneverdier.com
COOL FACT
In 2014 Verdier was invited to spend a semester as artist in residence at the Juilliard School in New York. In front of her easel at the heart of the orchestra, Verdier worked with conductor William Christie in a performance of Handel’s oratorio La Resurrezione.
‘Riding the rhythms and sound structures of the music, I would see certain forms appear, sometimes whole landscapes.’
This experience was captured in the film The Juilliard Experience, https://thejuilliardexperiment.com
(Image: Febienne Verdier, Dixit Dominus, Georg-Friedrich Haendel, 2015, ink, pigments and varnish on canvas)