Hélène
Le Bohec

artist

Hélène Le Bohec was born in Paris.  Both her parents are successfully published professors of Ancient Greek and Roman history and from a very young age she had been lucky enough to accompany them on their Greek, Italian and Tunisian archaeological quests.

About Hélène

After having read Classics extensively at La Sorbonne University, Hélène started to devote herself to painting along her acting and dancing careers which allowed her to carry on travelling.

Being exposed to the variety of landscapes Europe, Africa and America had to offer, she slowly built up a reservoir of fine memories she would later on dig into for her art.  Her taste for delicate refined illuminations and bold colourful textures evoke Giotto, Andrei Rublev, Fra Angelico, the Pre-Raphaelites, Gustave Moreau, Nikiforos Lytras, Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Nikolaos Gysis as well as Howard Hodgkin nowadays for whom she has a boundless admiration.

Hélène attended a painting course with Lucinda Oestreicher at the prestigious City Lit of London.  And in 2009, she graduated from the VivArte Painting Course which was led by the Spanish painter, Sandra Pons Carreras, in Athens.

About Her Work

 

Hélène has always been fascinated and moved by how the light bounces back on natural landscapes and man-made pieces of art.  She is constantly experimenting with the techniques, old and new, that can allow her to explore the dramatic combination of colours and surfaces and in so doing to recapture this so longed-for light in what she calls her “sculpted paintings”.

She reworks layers and uses collage, decoupage and different materials such as paper, wood, earth, metal leaves, rain, fire, wind and other natural treasures that she collects during her peripatetic adventures.  This tireless quest results in an eclectic and constantly evolving series of paintings overflowing with bold tactile and colourful contrasts.

The canvas becomes an experimental ground where these luminous episodes get to be recreated.  These painted memories mostly come from echoes that are more or less modified by the passing of time and that still somehow come through.  The whole experience of these special moments comes back to life again, thus encouraging the viewers to make their own emotional journeys and interpretations of the subject matter.  Characteristic of Helene Le Bohec’s her work is the fact that the paintings expand outside the edges of the canvas and in so doing allow a sense of freedom which leaves the composition regain its primal energy.  The act of painting itself is a very physical and passionate one as she needs to get the required texture and composition through mixing herself the materials in a way that only her senses can judge satisfying.  And if you feel like playing, you might turn the canvas over and find on some occasions a little surprise at the back… Have a nice journey!

Artist’s Statement

When asked how I can define my work, I often end up sharing a tremendously happy burst of laughter with my interlocutor (and, oh, how good it feels!) as, without me noticing until now, my answers were ranging from “mostly abstract” to “semi-figurative” and sometimes “somewhat decorative” which just clearly showed that I had absolutely no clues… But how could I describe with words what precisely came to be out of my incapacity to phrase something that was pure emotion?

For these bursts of laughter I am extremely grateful as they typically are for me the occasions to feel in my guts a tacit common emotion being caught and shared in its flight at a precise moment, and as laughters are only the polite versions of otherwise deeper, more intricate and more private emotions, I leave gravity to reach grace, the “ante-Verb”, the “arte-Verb”?

Testimonials

Hélène Le Bohec’s ethereal and unconstrained paintings engage us on a journey back to an inner and so far unknown self.

Professor Sylvie Le Bohec-Bouhet

Meow, meow, prrr, prrrrrrrr

Brigand de Kerlutin

If when contemplating eternity, the verb ceases, it’s no coincidence. Words attemp to frame a passing meaning, paintings try to free it and let it expand.  Hélène Le Bohec’s various mixes between matter and matters are constant efforts to blur the boundaries between reality and its transfiguration.

Suzanne Mariemberg

Miss Le Bohec’s colours are so bright that the angels and divine shadows can only but wake up and become stranded in her paintings. Thousands of semaphoric eyes watch over us. The dramatic contrasts that are so dear to her are like crosswords where she hopes, some kind of truth will phrase itself.

Odette de Mouzon

Superb and festive fireworks for our senses.

Philîppe Le Bohec

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