artist/ Emmanuelle Lemetais

France

Born in 1970, Emmanuelle Lemétais is a French painter who lives and works in Normandy. After an initial career in interior architecture and furniture design, she decided in 2002 to devote herself entirely to painting, a discipline she has practised since childhood.

Her training at the École Olivier de Serres and subsequently at the École Boulle gave her a solid command of drawing, composition and perspective – foundations that continue to underpin her work to this day. This technical rigour is combined with a constant exploration of light and colour, giving rise to works in which the rigorous construction of space interacts with a vivid and luminous palette.

Created using acrylics, pigments and pencil on linen canvas, her paintings begin with a preparatory drawing before being gradually built up through successive layers of colour. Straddling the line between figuration and abstraction, architecture, landscapes and floral compositions become the canvas for a pictorial style that favours suggestion over description. Light, broken down into a multitude of colourful shades, animates the surface of the canvas and creates a vibrancy that is one of the hallmarks of her work.

For over twenty years, Emmanuelle Lemétais has been exhibiting regularly in France through solo exhibitions, contemporary art fairs and various galleries.