lotie: natural progression

Bag U Should ll by Lotie

I have a soft spot for French artist Lotie's work. I just love her nature-inspired work and as some of you may remember, I spoke to her at length a few months ago (click here to check out some of her previous work). Today, I'm happy to say that Lotie has dropped by to answer some questions about her latest work debuting tomorrow at the Summer Sanctuary show at gallery hanahou in New York.

mj: What inspired your work for this show?

lotie: I felt deeply inspired by the topic of the exhibit: "Summer Sanctuary". It conjured up a place of rest, a feeling of freshness and well-being at the height of a blistering summer. All the elements in my drawing relate to this feeling: cool water, waterfall, bodies dropping with the heat and bathing in invigorating rivers, frogs, jellyfish, shady forests both humid and temperate, trees in bubble buds, and dew-logged moss. Both vegetation and human beings are coming back to life. The idea is to have the feeling of entering a bubble of freshness, escaping the heat and finally being able to breathe.


"Le fin du voyage"

mj: Do you have a favorite piece?

lotie: I cannot choose between "Le fin du voyage" and "L'Attente" ("Waiting"). I like both for totally opposite reasons. "Le fin du voyage" is a soothing and spaced out drawing, almost timeless. On the contrary, in "L'Attente", all the elements mix and overlap. The drawing is very dense and almost cluttered. Only the waterfall makes it breathe. However, I have a special fondness for "L'Attente": it is one of my few drawings in which human beings have not been totally turned into vegetation yet!


"L'Attente"

mj: How do you feel your work is evolving?

lotie: I tend to think that my work is evolving towards more lightness and more abstraction. I've started introducing lines that are neither rounded nor parallel, I draw in a more angular way, which was out of question for me until recently. As regard to colors, little by little I am leaving behind rather pastel shades. I prefer bright colors, stronger contrasts. My personal work (somewhat different from my work as an illustrator, which is more dependent on my clients' demands) contains fewer floral patterns. Up to now, the impression of softness, harmony and poetry that appeared at first sight, softened some kind of underlying aggressive tension. Today, this aggressiveness prevails more and more, both in the meaning it conveys and in the form it takes. It does not hide that much behind softness anymore.

Summer Sanctuary runs July 19-August 31 and features the work of seven artists: APAKI, Chris Long, IMAKETHINGS, Lotie, Marcus Oakley, Team Macho, and Yuka Katagiri at Gallery Hanahou, 611 Broadway, Suite 730, NYC 10012. Please make sure to RSVP if you'd like to attend the opening reception.

Please check back tomorrow as Andrew Groves aka IMAKETHINGS will be here to talk about his latest work.