A key artist at the gallery, Catherine Cazau invites us to discover the enchanting world of her studio. Nestled in the heart of the Drôme, this is the land where she was born and which continues to nourish her artistic inspiration. Much like the Drôme itself, her artistic work is shaped by two guiding principles at the core of her creativity: material and colour.
Hello Catherine, can you introduce yourself ?
My name is Catherine Cazau, and I live and work in the Drôme, in Châteaudouble, a small village perched 450 metres above Valence, with the hills stretching out before me. Drawing and painting asserted themselves in my life from a very early age. I can still picture myself at nine years old, sitting in class, drawing comic-strip-style girls’ faces on my pink blotting paper. My first exhibition took place at the age of thirteen, in an empty room at the gendarmerie in Dieulefit, a Provençal village in the Drôme where I lived for four years. My first true solo exhibition was held in 1990, in Crest in the Drôme, at the grand and beautiful Galerie Espace Liberté. Since then, I have exhibited in Paris, Nice, Antibes, Valence, Switzerland, Sweden… For 32 years, I worked part-time as a primary school teacher and full-time as an artist. I trained at the ENSBA, the Fine Arts School of Valence, in 1992 (the second year of the programme), and from 1990 to 2005 I also taught printmaking there.
How do you express yourself as an artist ?
I express myself essentially in two ways. Through PRINTMAKING, which was a revelation for me at the Fine Arts School in 1990, the most defining moment of my career, as this technique allows me to create imprints, my greatest passion. I also feel the need to express myself through painting, creating fairly large canvases (by preference) and working with texture (marble powder, sand, binding agents, acrylic paint, chalks…) which I often love to engrave! (Back to printmaking!)
What do you seek to represent in your works?
I do not seek to represent anything in my works. My work is abstract. Some may see physical spaces in it, bodies, the sea, a desert, mountains… whereas I feel the need to see nothing in it. I wish to draw the viewer into my own space of sensibility. My approach is close to poetry. Visitors can look at my works as if they were reading a poem by Baudelaire or Charles Juliet. Looking at one of my canvases is simply about being in the present moment, it is an inner journey.
For me, painting is a spiritual quest, a search for the absolute.
“…Her work, by turns one of burial and resurgence, reveals itself as a subtle palimpsest, traced in watermark…” Claire Gilson
Duchamp himself said, “It is the viewer who makes the work”!
Can you describe your creative process?
I do not make sketches before starting my pieces. The work builds slowly, step by step. I often begin with a textured base. I lay my canvas on the floor, coat it with glue, then dust it with sand or marble powder. I then engrave various marks into it. Once dry, several layers of acrylic paint are spread on, then washed back. I engrave again, words, or fragments of words, using oil pastels… The words are written into illegibility, then covered once more with layers of paint. A lengthy process, palimpsests. I continue until I reach a balance that feels right to me.
My canvases thus become, by turns, silent walls where the surface is scratched and incised, or talkative walls covered in multiple marks. As for printmaking, I do not practise it in an academic way. I love to blend printmaking, painting, marks and collage. I limit my print runs, choosing creation over reproducibility. The print thereby becomes an enchanting field of possibilities.
What are your sources of inspiration?
I take an interest in varied forms of art, but my passion lies with abstract art. Many artistic movements have fascinated me: Cubism, Dadaism, Expressionism, Action Painting, Informalism, Minimal Art… And among painters: Picasso, Miró, Klee, Tàpies, Hartung, Pollock, Fautrier, Dubuffet, De Kooning, Debré, Tal Coat, Schwitters, Soulages, Clavé, Twombly, Alechinsky… and many others!
The traces of everyday life also inspire me greatly! They can be found in the forest or in the city, on trees, on walls, on the ground… It is pure poetry, everything is right there!
