Ma-Thé

Ma-Thé paints when her professional and personal lives allow her to free up some time. Her paintings are the results of long years of seeing others from the inside. And if she ever needed maturity (all these eyes she has in her head !)to paint, her portraits have reached a degree of maturity that won't cease to amaze us.

The world of Ma-Thé is a strange universe indeed populated with women emaciated faces. their eyes,inordinately huge, might put you ill at ease, yet more than often challenge you, ande resonate through the depths of the pastel colors.
The selection of paintings presented in this exhibition various ways to approach stare. The dilated pupils, the elongated eyelashes, the fraying of the almond-shaped eyes are attemps to capture impressions of the mirror of our souls.
what are these half-erased portraits staring at ? What sort of introspection process are they up to ? through the insidious game of splitting and recurrence, Ma-Thé confuses us; and suddenly it's the painting that starts staring at the onlooker. Abyss of the onlooker-looked-at relationship, double game of observation and reflection; this an invitation from these impressive women to go through the other side of the mirror.
The painter's very personal treatment of pastel (chalks she works countless hours on, as she likes their smells so much), her preference for cameos of blues and grays, color this procession of women in shades of melancholy and softness. ELLE, La DAME du LAC, AILLEURS, OMBRE et LUMIERE, freely pour themslves into this crepuscular color palette. On some of the other faces , on the contrary, one can feel the blow of the spirit of anger. Of expressionist facture, carmines and brown underline the arch of the eyebrows, strengthen the thickness of the lips, separate the locks of hair, this is all done in wild snapshots, such as in: EUX, SHAMBLEAU, La NOIRE, La SAUVAGE, etc
Behind these oblong faces, Ma-Thé barely hides itself, Each of her pictures is indeed a self-portrait, discreet witness of one of her life monents: an encounter, a frienship, a mourring.
Imitating or reproducing is meaninglen, her muse is instinct and nothing else.