Artist Research- Jean Francois Nielly
Since deciding to explore colour I have come across various artists that have used and manipulated colours either directly or indirectly in their work.
The Artist that first stuck me was the French artist: Jean Francoise Nielly
She is inspired by architecture, not the architecture in Paris- where she works, but architecture as a practice.
She constructs her paintings as an architect would construct a model of a building. She paints bright abstract coloured portraits on a large scale. She predominantly uses a palette knife to work and almost sculpts the paint onto the canvas. She works her way through the contours of the face replacing tonal changes with bright exaggerated colours usually being on opposite sides of the spectrum. This coupled with the large size of her paintings and the sharp lines carved out by the palette knife creates striking, confrontational, energetic and precise pieces of work.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hT_l3XyKo8
In a Youtube clip of Nielly working in her studio (link above) she says “There is something too hard and sad about life for me, so I indulge on colours”.
For me Jean Francoise Nielly’s work offered a logistical solution to my first painting in my project. Working on Sierra I found it almost impossible to compile to colours in a way that was tonally convincing. After seeing Jean Francoise Nielly’s paintings however I was able to see how she constructed her paintings through abstract tonal values- which was particularly helpful.
