Sur l'île de Polysémie / On the island of Polysemy (2020) Painting by Émilie Pauly

A self-taught artist, I started painting around ten years ago, shortly after my son was born.

What led me to painting? Essentially the need to escape a boring working life, to reconnect with my childhood dreams at a time when I'd lost my way, and the desire to bring fantasy to everyone (young and old). I was fascinated by the magnificent illustrations I'd discovered in the children's books I'd read to my son, and I'd wanted to create my own images, my own paintings, that would tell the story of my inner world, my dreams, my fantasies, my ideals. I wanted to paint what moved me so that I'd never forget it, so that I'd have a memory of it that I could pass on and communicate.

When I create characters in pencil, I never know in advance what I'm going to draw. I let my hand go and then I see what appears. I like not knowing where my gesture is going to take me. I like to be surprised by what emerges from the first strokes of my pencil. I have the pleasant impression of accessing something of myself that had been lost (in my subconscious or in my distant memories, who knows?).

When I've collected a large enough number of pencil drawings, I look for the ones that could be put together in the same scene, the characters who could have adventures together in the same painting. I spend a lot of time creating these compositions. Once I've worked out which characters have something to say to each other and what setting they could be in, I start painting. I always paint my background first (a natural landscape) and then insert my characters. Everything is done in gouache.

Painting and drawing seemed to me to be more reliable means of expression than texts and speeches. As a linguist by training, I spent a long time working on words and the construction of meaning when I was preparing my doctoral thesis. The polysemy in languages can be so dizzying! Although I'm always sensitive to the poetry of literary works and the beauty of well-crafted arguments, I'm now less moved by them than by the poetry or beauty of images. Words, sometimes misleading or a source of misunderstanding, never colourful enough or on the contrary too saturated, can't do everything. When we no longer know what to say or how to say it, when words fail us, when silence imposes itself, painting, sculpture, music or dance can take over, for the pleasure of all.

• Nationality: FRANCE
• Date of birth : 1977
• Artistic domains:
• Groups: Contemporary French Artists