“The mountains turn blue. The bottom of the valley gets filled with a white smokey mist that tapers, swings and spreads like a wave. A cold breath already rises from this impalpable lake, and Nonoche’s nose brightens and moistens.”
Colette
“Everything got quiet around me. Nothing better than silence can suggest the feeling of unlimited spaces. I entered these spaces. Noises colour the area and give it a kind of a resonant body. Their absence leaves it all pure and this is the feeling of vast, of deep, of unlimited that strikes us in silence.”
Bosco
Lyse Mary, artist painter in Sallanches, Haute Savoie, France
Lyse Mary was born in Pézenas, the town of Molière in the south of France.
It was in Lille in the North, that she went to study in the Beaux Arts school for two years. She remains mainly self-taught in her approach. She settled down in the hollow of the Mont Blanc mountains, in Sallanches next to Annecy, between Cordon and Combloux, bewitched by the beauty of the landscape.
Curious about all the pictorial movements, she stays on the border of them, constantly looking for her own limits of style. Is the human not a tightrope walker seeking for equilibrium? Maybe a painter and an artist even more. After several collective and personal exhibitions, she regularly exhibits her works both in a Megève art gallery and in exhibitions in Pézenas, in her region of origin. She also exhibited in the GATT in Switzerland and participated in salons in Paris.
In her paintings, her interest oscillates between human and nature.
She considers painting like venturing toward herself and the others.
Lyse Mary’s work as perceived by other artists
Between human and nature, the artist doesn’t choose. She pursues her quest of the being, in her reflection about the meaning of existence, through the eyes of a child, the ones of an old lady and her cat, or the more interrogative ones of the turban woman. And if a certain torment is still perceptible, serenity is asserting itself in Lyse Mary’s work: curves of a body, softness of maternal arms tightly hugging a child, tranquillity of a monk from these high plateaus on which one doesn’t know where mineral and animal worlds start and finish, light at the heart of a forest, light of a Venetian dawn…
Light. A constant quest for Lyse Mary, an essential element for the balance between man and nature, between flesh and spirit. Light of these high lands where the ancestral life remains, light emerging from the mist, light of the gesture towards its absolute…
Through her work, Lyse Mary subtly reveals herself: the elegance of the line doesn’t conceal neither her commitments nor her own questioning and gives her painting a self-assured maturity.
Mireille Barnier
LYSE MARY, Painter of the supernatural, supernatural artist
When having a look at Lyse Mary’s painting, at first glance one can say: « there are characters, landscapes and decors. »
« Classical », recognised themes that go through centuries, generations, since the dawn of time.
But things are not that simple!
Lyse loves with a capital L: nature in its totality.
Lyse loves with a capital L: humanity in its entirety.
Lyse loves with a capital L: cultures, ideas, philosophy of religions in their universality.
Her « diverse curiosity » is deep and natural… and gives birth to a supernatural painting. Never superficial, never « realist » and even less « Hyperrealist » !
One could create the superlative « Hyper supernatural »about her art.
Lyse’s painting leans upon a drawing that is always fancy, elaborate, structured, well-thought-out.
LThe choreography of bodies, postures, inventive gestures does its utmost to raise their « bodily »dignity, their mortal condition.
This is how their presence becomes supernatural like magic.
Every « mise en scène », whilst being precise to a fraction of an inch, seems to be wrapped in the veil of Orpheus, transporting and bewitching us. Contemplative eyes stare at a space-time continuum which is often unlimited, precise and blurred at the same time, characterised or indefinite, paradoxically shifty and close. Lyse places us as privileged observers in the centre of an unusual show that still remains somehow familiar. When we are looking at Lyse’s work, we are facing one or more « apparitions ».
Lyse Mary manipulates the contraries: the natural proximity she keeps with beings, in the settings she creates, is amazing… The way she uses natural although unreal situations creates incredible temporal gaps. Lyse practises her talent of creating supernatural characters within what she represents. We witness the appearance of various beings made of flesh and spirit, of fantastic landscapes, shows, places, facts, events, as natural as exceptional in their supernatural dimension.
Lyse Mary applies her « creed »: I want to discover, explore and share these people’s and places’ intimacy, with the deep conviction that they will bring us something important. Their « distance », their a priori « strangeness » is quickly replaced by dialogue and thought communication.
The spirit of every work propagates itself to the others. The humanity part, the tenderness are continuously spreading with subtlety in glaze, fuzziness, ochre, finished parts opposed to unfinished parts. As if the things were doing and undoing themselves under our eyes; as if the world was constructing and deconstructing itself, in order to appear better and more beautiful. With Lyse Mary, things oddly appear to us more « obvious », but never banal. This is the art to hide in order to demonstrate better the intimacy of being. One can be surprised and tell oneself: « Yes! I feel like I know them! These people, these landscapes… I can, I am ready and able to meet them and share something with them! » In spite of being certain of all this, I never remember the images in Lyse’s paintings… not because of their complexity but because of the part of mystery in them that remains intact!
Lyse Mary makes us potential actors of a spiritual communion with the others and their « elsewhere ».
Lyse Mary makes us potential actors of a spiritual communion with the others and their « elsewhere ».
We become endowed with powers, new abilities, capable of witnessing and understanding natural phenomena whilst becoming « supernatural » ourselves. Lyse Mary’s real talent is to reverse the usual. Lyse is not a visionary as we understand or as we expect it (from most of the artists).
Lyse makes us and raises us to the rank of visionaries.
Lyse Mary endlessly surprises us with her hyper supernatural.
Stéphane Cerutti