A Contre Coeur/unwillingly (2015) Painting by Nataly. Adam

Brought up in an artistic environment with a father busy painting, sculpting and playing the saxophone and an absent mother , i quickly locked up myself in an imaginary world. Hindered by my father's natural talents, I started expressing my emotions through writing. It soon became a way of existing and of catching my father's attention. Even though I have never given up writing since i wrote songs for artists , I felt the urge of overcoming the limits of words to express my emotions and to come to grips with the complex mechanism of the subconscious. Painting suddenly appeared as a natural extension of my thoughts. I started painting when i was 20 but at that time I was blocked since I felt I was encroaching on my father's turf, so i kept on throwing away every work i painted. And much later , an artist Friend came to my place and saw one of my painting. Her surprise , her sheer enthusiasm made me think I was entitled to consider myself a painter.
Painting has become so far a healing process aiming at reconciling the present and the past that's why my paintings always oscillate between balance and desequilibrium, agitation and calm, nightmares and dreams. My work is a voyage throughout the meanders of the subconscious brought into light in various forms: through symbols , texture, colors .
The choice of palette knive is deeply significant in my work since the instrument and is as sharp as the wounds i have been struggling to heal. I often use thick layers of paint and scrape the canvas as if digging for something. May i add that i always paint with the songs i love and that i can listen to obssessively and i let myself get carried away. So each painting is associated to a song which echoes something in me.
In my youth I was deeply impressed by shagall's work . His outstanding combination of naiveness and surrealism literally transported me , i could spend hours lingering on one painting and at that time I could sense the power of creation. I will quote one sentence he wrote in 1958 'I chose painting , it was as vital to me as food was. It seemed to be like an open window through which i would fly to another world'
And this is what painting is for me , a travel through another world, a hidden one that i'm striving to dig out.
Of course Shagall is not the only painter i'm indebted to, Dali, Miro, Modigliani, and Matisse have also inhabited my universe.
.

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