Thoughts on a painter

When you are stuck, look at art.

I’ve found it difficult to write recently. I’ve been teaching myself a whole set of new subjects and, unsurprisingly, it’s been overwhelming. What I love is art and pictures, and I must always remind myself of this. They can tell us something about ourselves, show us an entire story in just a stroke or motif, open a world full of questions, and get us to think about a thousand stories that might exist in an image, depending on which way we look at it. When things get too much, I turn to art. Yesterday, I dug up the work of a young artist I admire: Nathanaëlle Herbelin. We met in Venice a few weeks ago, and spoke for hours at a fancy party we both knew no one at. It was perfect.

Herbelin paints intimacy: quiet moments that will speak to us all, from embracing each other’s bodies (or our cat!), looking out into the distance – daydreaming, maybe looking for the answers, or submerged in water, a feeling impossible to describe in words, but somehow doable in paint. Although they’re quiet moments, they’re scenes that you hold onto forever in your memory, and can be so intense, and fleeting, that you’d do anything to go back to them.

Let’s look at some works.

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Emmanuelle et Efi, 2024

This scene is dazzling. Look at how many colours and textures there are in the background. It’s like the painting becomes her palette as she tries out different tones and how they might work next to each other. Then there’s the table, is it for one or two? Who has been there, who peeled that tangerine, drank that coffee, ate the cereal, but left the milk? The cat’s face looks worried. I don’t know if it’s the owner looking after the cat, or vice versa, but I love how their faces are buried into each other, symbolising warmth and comfort.

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Câlin, 2021

Backs in paintings would make a great exhibition. A painting can be a portal to another world, and to not know who I am looking at makes me yearn for them harder. I’ve never seen touch like this. Look how the golden paint that makes up her hands seep into his skin. But, for me, everything changes when our gaze meets hers, with the glimpse of an eye that might be an insight into another story. What is she telling us? While he is engulfed in her body, she has one eye elsewhere. Is everything all as it seems?

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Augustin, 2022

We’ve all been here, sunken into our sofa not knowing which way life will take us or what will happen after we get up from this sofa. He looks worn out, but the way he’s conversing with us shows that he’s trying. I feel for him, you want to tell him it’s ok.

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Shemesh (V1), 2019

How love should be: enraptured in each other’s arms and cloaked under a starry sky.

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Madeleine and Clément, 2020

Two figures submerged in water, it reminds me of Gluck’s Medallion (YouWe), when two faces are immortalised as being locked to each other. Here, the artist goes further, she shows what it takes to hold someone, physically, with their hands.

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Eléné carrying her painting, 2022

I want to end with this one. It signals a time of finality or renewal, and gives me hope.

OK, back to work! Love Katy