GALERIA AZUR MADRID
a
< Annabelle Gaydier
France

ARTSPER

BIOGRAPHY

For as long as I can remember I have drawn, especially a lot of animals, small or large beasts.
I have always been fascinated by the animal world, by its strangeness, its diversity and its beauty.

As a child, in my grandparents’ vast garden, I spent hours observing ants, dragonflies, butterflies, lizards, frogs… Only child, I fraternized with this little world.

I did a lot of hiking, on weekends in Auvergne where I lived, but also in the Alps and the Pyrenees on holiday. I keep more than a memory, it constituted me: these moments of adventure, of surpassing, of intensity, of wonder, of joy, of the extraordinary – there is always something happening to anyone who wants to see it, feel it. This hand-to-hand with the mountain, this fever that pushes us to move forward, this aspiration to discover what is behind the mountain… fully participated in my training.

To go and see what is beyond the mountains is to go beyond the borders of our village, of our apartment, of our knowledge, it makes us curious and sets us in motion, beyond our feet, in our ability to expand our universes, to take our thoughts on a journey, to emancipate ourselves, to meet others, to taste the different, to open perspectives.

I remember the joy of meeting animals: seeing them in the distance or, a rare and disturbing experience, meeting their eyes.

I believe I have always had this powerful feeling of belonging to the community of all living things, this intuition that everyone was in their place, neither superior nor inferior, that the balance of this teeming life was fragile and that we had to be careful.

Also I was lucky to be in a “green” school where we often went for walks, and all the subjects studied were linked to our wanderings, our discoveries… Everything made sense.

I’ve been living in Paris for 27 years.
Remaining attentive to all the animal and plant forms that surround me, the richness of the living world of my childhood remains at a distance, lurking in my memories but constantly activating my imagination.

I studied architecture and have been practicing for 20 years. At the same time I continued to draw, often organic shapes (as if to counterbalance the straight lines drawn on the computer) then animals, again all kinds of critters.

CV

2004: Architect Diploma, Paris (France)
2004/2019: Architect in Agency, Paris (France)
Since 2019: Freelance Architect, Paris/Montreuil (France)

Painting Exhibitions:
2023. October/November: La Boulonnerie – « All the Bestioles » – Paris/Montreuil (France) – Solo Exhibition
2023. December: Galleria Cael – “Gifts of Art – 4th Milan Exhibition” – Milan (Italie) – Group Exhibition

STATEMENT

At my own small level, I claim and wish to reanimate this feeling of belonging to the reign of all living things, to awaken this deep link between us and all that vibrates, to get out of this human microcosm.

Reconnect with more embodied stories and better distribute roles between animals, humans and plants,
it’s essential that our imagination is interested in it because only imagination makes things meaningful.
Repopulate our thoughts and dreams with forests, wolves, pink flamingos, giant squid…

Each animal is unique and therefore irreplaceable, it has its personality, its knowledge, its experience… with which it builds its own world.

Often on wood, but also more classically on canvas, shapes made up of solid colored areas stand out from a raw or plain background. The salience of these significant forms as animal or plant figures, being there for themselves, in the foreground, all singular and sovereign.

They pay tribute to the extraordinary diversity of life forms, prodigiously inventive, which populate our planet and contribute daily to making it habitable.

There are those who crawl, those who jump, those who swim, those who climb, those who fly, those who push and take root… each use, each palpation of the world forming like a world.

What arouses interest and awakens curiosity, what enriches is to rub shoulders with very different, so perhaps we should stop looking out for our similarities – as with humans, let’s expand our own space to gain a more open, vivacious and perennial world. The danger of being behind closed doors, beyond narcissism, blandness and boredom, is running out of air and perishing from asphyxiation.

This large repertoire of singular creatures, this declaration of existences, is an invitation to better welcome them into our lives and into our invigorated imaginations, an incentive to wander, contemplate, let ourselves be surprised and finally breathe better.

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