Marie-Claude Bugeaud

"In Marie-Claude Bugeaud’s works, titles suggest comparisons. Given after the fact, they are based on allusions, she says. The word « allusion » comes from the latin « alludere », which means « to play » ; to play games intended to… create a movement connecting painting to a visual imprint, for instance. Allusions may also be a simple tribute or an emotion in front of Piero’s blue colour which adorns the Virgin’s body, as well as they may remind the viewer of some green seen in one of Manet’s creations, a memory which resurfaces once the painting is carried out. Moreover, they are links with the history of painting and daily life, highlighting the elements painting has brought together through its faltering lines. Therefore, this is less a matter of composition than of relations, displacements and coexistences. Finally, allusions are a moving surface of these paintings because they are penetrated by living material, they are based on it and they appear right before our eyes.

Painting « a fresco », that is painting on a primer which has not dried out yet, enables the paint to take on a lean unsubstantial colour in order to bring out the bareness of the surface. The reference to the Virgin and Child Enthroned with Four Angels by Piero della Francesca also brings to mind this particular period of time unfolding without any possible return or protection. “You do not see the thread hanging overhead in my studio but I keep walking on it, and it often breaks,” the painter says. Marie-Claude Bugeaud means to spend her time doing and undoing her work, as she considers it incomplete and rejects its finiteness. The artist is involved in a struggle against the fascinating permanent beauty of the monochrome with which the painting is created. Lines or dots are drawn on backgrounds painted with a fluid colour like incisions cutting the surface open, making it unstable and loose. They cut up and unfold the space of the painting. Along lines and checks, dots and a few uneven shapes give Marie-Claude Bugeaud’s painting its own rhythm.

Extracts by Romain Matthieu, April 2015