Sophie Carrier

Sophie Carrier has nearly 35 years of artistic experience behind her. Her work has been the subject of numerous solo and group exhibitions.
Her work can be found in several private collections.

ARTISTIC APPROACH

When I paint, it's first and foremost the search for a state; a feeling of freedom and self-forgetfulness that motivates me. It's also the desire to create a world that appeals to me visually: an abundant, cheerful and slightly naive world, far removed from a certain morbid pessimism that I perceive around me in culture, the media and art, and which affects me. This universe is built around the theme of the garden.
The process takes place directly on the canvas, most of the time with the painting flat on the ground. I proceed in a constant oscillation between chance and choice. I start with a key element that has previously set me off (a bird, a flower), and the painting builds up in layers of provoked accidents and controlled elements, mixing drawings, collage, realistically painted elements, polymer puddles, large brushstrokes, overlaps, transparency, small motifs, in a composition where emptiness rubs shoulders with fullness, where I want to keep visible traces of each of these layers; like a history of the painting's construction. Leaving the canvas bare is something that struck me and appealed to several contemporary artists, including François Lacasse, from whom I also retained the idea of pouring paint onto the canvas and controlling it without brushes, by moving the painting. The world of children is also omnipresent in my work. As an elementary school teacher, I feel very close to them, very sensitive to their drawings and imagery. My pictorial world is tinged with their joy and naivety, to help us forget the harshness of the world we live in.