Interview with Agnès Boulloche

Here is the lexicon that comes to my mind whenever I watch your paintings: escape, dream,
travel, faraway horizons, time, play, doubt. Can you tell me what these words evoke for you?


Escape

I have always felt like getting away. Always longed for freedom. Such an
inclination is dangerous and prevents you from taking the straight route.
Since I was a child, I have been an escape artist. I was lucky: my left hand
was kind enough to support my daydreaming. It drew my escape route and
enabled me to progress in this marvelous dimension painting. Thank you,
my dear left hand.

Dream

Dreaming has always been for me a fulltime job.


Travel

My taste for dreams and freedom made me a sea-lover and a well-travelled
girl. I collect islands, I love Africa, faraway and unsettled destinations. I
always carry a tiny paintbox. I paint aboard planes and boats, in the Gabon
maquis, under the Makuti tents of Zanzibar. If I stop painting for a couple
of days, my hands become like two empty pockets, useless and painful.

Horizons

I live in the Ile de Ré most of the time, and I’d like you to share, if only for
a moment, the pleasure of living in Loix. Imagine a boundless sky, with an
incredibly light air! Imagine an ocean green as a jaguar, but often turning
ultramarine blue instantly… Salt-marshes breaking up the hillocks with
fragments of mirrors… Tiny lanes wandering between earth, sky and sea…
As I am always in a maze, horizons are my bearings.



Time

I must juggle with my natural impatience and the patience necessary to
complete my paintings. I would suppose «normal time» must be
somewhere in-between.



Play

To play is to go from darkness to light on a hopscotch—with a hunting pit
underneath. Everything is unsure. You never win it all, you never lose it all.
I am a tightrope walker.

Masquerade

Is it a hat, is it a hood or is it just make-up? The creatures you see in my
paintings are always in disguise; they are not what they seem to be. Ruthless
rhino, sweet unicorn, moth-elf… Let them dance their saraband. Let them
do it their way.




Doubt

What if, one day, my hands did not grow again, as they do every morning?
What if, one evening, I no longer were a dreambuilder?

contacts: http://agnes.boulloche.free.fr/