Abstract Blue Landscape (2003) - Odile Levigoureux

Oil on wood, signed Odile Levigoureux, titled "Landscape" and dated 2003 on the back. Dimensions: 21.5 x 20 cm. Odile Levigoureux is a French painter, visual artist, and sculptor, born in Paris on February 19, 1945. Trained in stained glass at the École Supérieure des Métiers d'Art in Paris, she explored a variety of artistic mediums—tapestry, felt, handmade plant-based papers, artist's books, bas-relief libraries—before turning to modeling around the year 2000. Ceramics then proved to be the ideal technique for her to express the profusion of forms, volumes, and colors that attract her. Her fascination with the Baroque world—music, painting, sculpture, and the richness of its decoration—has led her work toward theatrical, highly ornate, gilded, and sometimes large-scale pieces. The plant architecture is symmetrical, built around a central point, either compact or very airy. Nature is omnipresent: leaves, fruits, interlacing forms—a whole world unfolds, strange, sinuous stems, flowers ending in the mouths of fantastical animals… sometimes one or more faces from which horns or oversized plants emerge… Alongside this work with plants, she is also creating still-life installations as a tribute to the Flemish painters she admires: Carl Fabritius, Frans Snyders, Pieter Claesz, Willem Kalf… Without preparatory sketches, she embarks on the creative adventure, shaping the red clay from Beauvais that she particularly loves. This clay is covered with a glaze, giving the pieces a milky and vaporous appearance, sometimes enhanced with gold leaf. Source: http://www.odile-levigoureux.fr