''LE PAS EN AVANT'' _ H100 x 40 cm (2023) Painting by Catherine Villa

Catherine Villa is a contemporary French artist known for her distinctive approach to oil painting, reminiscent of watercolors, on canvases that are fully saturated. Her artistic process demands a perfect and skillful execution, emphasizing respect for the initial sketch. Villa's technique involves applying very thin layers in washing styles on soaked canvases. She employs rags to delicately wipe away overflowing colors, using very few brush strokes to maintain transparencies and enrich the material while simultaneously lightening it. Playing with dilutions, she carefully unveils the artwork, engaging in a process of revelation and concealment until the desired effect emerges from the ethereal mist of light.

In her paintings, dark values caress lights without overpowering them, and whites strive to retain their purity while colors shimmer alongside blacks that never reach a profound darkness. The result is a multi-layered work that invites the viewer's gaze to penetrate beyond the surface, creating a sense of depth in a third dimension that extends beyond the canvas.

Catherine Villa's artistic vision goes beyond the visual. She expresses a pursuit of the invisible through color vibrations and the simplification of shapes, creating a space for imagination and dream. In her works, she captures connected beings, traces of our passage through life, interwoven links between individuals or with their personal histories.

Villa believes in the existence of a hidden world within each of us, and she sees herself as an artist who unveils this concealed realm sporadically, akin to waves revealing rocks during low tide. Through her art, she gives birth to organic or human shapes that evoke emotions and, perhaps, serve as conduits to unearth buried memories.

• Nationality: FRANCE
• Date of birth : 1958
• Artistic domains:
• Groups: Contemporary French Artists