Catherine Tartanac Pertuy

Catherine Tartanac Method

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I did not go towards painting, it came to me, it was there like those obvious things that are before our eyes, and whose importance we do not yet measure. Like a landscape that we walk towards and can only see some parts of it at first, then it becomes clearer little by little as we are getting closer; it grows, and finally reveals itself in its entirety and its magnetic presence.

          Painting is an Other, which accompanies my questions, my emotions, my chaotic and passionate relationships with the sacredness of life and its infinite reflections.
Since my childhood, I have been teaching myself how to draw and paint. There are a few artists in my family: musicians, painters, cabinetmakers (Nancy’s school). For a long time now, starting with a virgin canvas, I lay my feelings, my emotions, and thoughts animated by a pulsion of life.

          My favorite medium is oil that I find sensual, hard, that requires a slow work on the canvas which is often big. I mix, add, take off, I “cook” pigments, oils, sand, and sometimes gold. Light, shadows, and colors are born on my canvas or papers.

         I draw a lot of small series, (plumb, rock, papers, or inks) from nature: greens, horizons, mountains, rocks, sea…but also mythological painting or ancient painting centered around the body and the representation of the human body.
          I explore and collect, movements and escape lines, perspective, often there is only the print left. In my workshop, I have packages full of « insignificant » things such as drawings and paintings which take in my work a power of inspiration.
I have my ways despite the unknown, my way of doing things comes and goes between imaginary and the element’s reality, failures, starting again, and moments of grace.
           Adventurous, I like to explore the unknown, to create and experiment.
Defying confinement, i constantly scan the imprint of  the infinite’s print surrounding us. “this shining strange feeling transcending daily natural order” (Jean BAZAINE Le temps de la peinture)
My artistic pattern tries to link complex levels: this link between the infinite transcending us, the worry it produces, and at the same time the absolute necessity of its presence. Nothing is predefined, but it is this adventure that gives a purpose to my work.

            I went from figurative landscape (1995) to something more abstract art. To give a metaphysical echo, I like to use a big format (tryptic, diptych, polytopic) that submerges the body.
It has been years that figurative inclusions were drawn on my canvas, I explore the painting on paper that I create. From this vein came the series of whispers and feelings, the Giants, and formed the periodic table of the elements of life.

             I was mainly influenced by many different horizons. I love nature and the sky. I love painting and looking at it. I also love painters. Some of them move and amaze me, Brugel, Goya, Klimt, and then Pollock, Joan Mitchell, Zao Wou-Ki, whose canevases reveal a lightning feeling of liberty.
Manessier’s retrospective came as a shock to me, about the true power of painting,in 1992 at Paris’ Grand Palais. These enormous canvases, similar to trees of life, columns built to resemble the magnificence and richness of a sensitive word, this is the same as putting a knee to the ground.
Music and poetry that can tell without demonstrating the soul’s mysteries are essential to me.
           For many years, I have been living and working in the Vaucluse my actual workshop is located in Lauris’s castle court
I often exhibit my work in French cities: Paris, Nancy, Aix en Provence, Marseille, Nîmes, Nantes.