Emmanuelle Auzias
Abstract Painter  

For this show called Nude Addiction, I wanted to express my love of the human body and the emotions that it can convey to the viewers. I used to paint in a figurative way before I moved to non-representative abstract five years ago, so these past few months I have endeavored to explore again body shapes and volumes from the perspective of Abstract Expressionism. All of the human bodies displayed in this show were sketched from live models. My intention was to capture motions and emotions of poses, and to nurture my art-making process with the shapes and marks that intuitively and quickly came to mind.

In my process, I build from the bottom to the top, playing with different textures through the use of acrylic paint, charcoal, graphite, pastel, oil stick, ink, markers and other media such as collages of painted rice paper, sketches on paper, magazines and newspapers. My marks can be bold or timid, rough or smooth, often reminiscent of scars on a body. I do not choose the composition first- instead I allow myself to be led by the colors, and for this show, they are the warmest and earthiest types of colors in order to support this idea of human bodies. When the mark-making and collage processes become too chaotic, I pay more attention to the composition and the elements of design, trying to calm the overabundance of energy I laid on the canvas or on the wood panel. Thinking about what I like the most, what speaks to me strongly and what I want to keep hidden like the buried secrets we all have, I keep working... Throughout this process and playing with the transparency, I like to guess about the layers underneath for more depth, and allow different stories to emerge depending on how far the viewer is. I like to imagine people exploring the entire surface of the piece and letting their imagination fly everywhere, like rediscovering every detail of the body of their loved one. Ultimately, my goal is to obtain a true expression of myself that is energetic and bright, and hopefully an esthetically pleasing piece where the eyes can wander and always find new details. It is like the piece has its own story, with bad and good memories and we can all start having a discussion about it…