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VIE
ARTISTIQUE
silhouette, a fleeting shadow cast, a momentary gesture-halted in mid-air:
everything in Nelly Harel’s painting is a moment of instant magic. Human
presence of course, but without excess, and nothing systematic at all. If the
painter admits to being fascinated by crowds, this does not mean that these
canvases are about “non”-peoples, anonymous clones, or mindless sheep: a posture
or bearing, the angle of a head, an unfinished wave of the hand, even the
beginnings of a gesture, these unfulfilled details suffice to distinguish each
individual.
Crowds, smaller groups, or sometimes only isolated individuals, the ensemble contrives to make the street come to life, a square, or the inside of a café, like a secret choreography.
A small ditty singing the streets of Montmartre. Blank space takes form: a slope down onto the terrace of a café, accentuated by a simple addition of intense blue, is enough to extol the whole - we were conscious of the fact, but had never looked at Montmartre like that.
A pigeon, alone in the middle of the square, a group, soberly “occupying” the benches of the place des Abbesses, the simplified make-up – and space stretches in the soft evening sunlight. The same with a truck, rear door open onto a load of beef carcasses in the rue Lepic, the paving-stones shining with all shades of blue: life, in a remarkable painting.
Both the familiar and the incongruous, united through a warm and tender eye. The painter has her personal way of guiding us with the tip of her brush, a way of melting daily events and brief encounters, into a strong and precise aura.
A gift for reflected light, a fluid touch, the artist has grasped the trick of putting all the resources of colour to use… Nelly Harel: art on tiptoe.
Born
in 1954 in Bordeaux, Nelly very rapidly developed a passion for drawing,
especially portraits, no doubt influenced by those which her grandmother had
painted in Europe and north Africa.
Self-taught, in spite of a short time spent at the Beaux Arts de Toulouse, she built up experience by working on commission: sanguine portraits, then in oils, in the 70s. In the 1980s she painted some oils of impressionist, and then “oriental traveler” tendencies. These different approaches enabled her to develop new colour techniques. In the 90s, she adopted a more personal style, and took part in some collective exhibitions in the Provence. Since then she has essentially concentrated on urban landscapes, and silhouettes of passersby, looking to situate the frontier between the two subjects, all the more to deny its existence.
“Fascinated by the rhythms of the town and its crowds, I try to find therein, a connection to nature in general, this reveals itself when human purposes become silent. There is a similarity between the layers of urban humanity, animal colonies, and landscapes, it’s a question of scale and it often tells the same stories, those which speak about life. Then, I go from discretion to continuity, I paint a bit of wall, some shutters, a smattering of crowd, some leaves and I like to listen to the duet of colour and contrast, where the light is dancing, where the scene comes together.
Victor Garonne, 2006
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