“We all love stories, and it is the ability of the portrait to allow us to weave one. I thus invite the viewer to invent their own story in the face of this stolen moment. This fugitive moment was taken from the heart of life to capture the similarities that resonate within us,” says Marie-Agnes Robin.
Born in 1963 in a suburb of Paris, artist Marie-Agnes Robin has been living in Quebec for more than 30 years. She moved to Terrasse-Vaudreuil, where she has been working in her home studio for the last few years.
Agnes has always been interested in painting, and her job has allowed her to rediscover this passion. Artistic painting is now an important part of her life. As a passionate and self-taught artist, she started by exploring various mediums like collages, markers, and pastels.
“Since my first works, I have dedicated a preponderant place to the human being in the heart of my paintings. Self-taught, I paint portraits that are primarily acrylic and in which I insert mixed media (gold leaf or collages) in my studio at Terrasse Vaudreuil,” says Agnes.
“It is through the gesture and the transposition of the material on the canvas that I give a distinctive signature to my new series focused on emotions. Using black and white for the face, I invite the viewer to enter my works to vibrate to the rhythm of the colors of their own emotions,” says Agnes.
These faces, mainly feminine, stand out as engines of dialogue with the viewer. The presence of the soul is materialized through the subject and enhanced by the surrounding colors.
“We all love stories, and it is the ability of the portrait to allow us to weave one. I thus invite the viewer to invent their own story in the face of this stolen moment. This fugitive moment was taken from the heart of life to capture the similarities that resonate within us,” says Agnes.
Agnes’ questioning of the news about the place and respect for women and all vulnerable living beings push her to create. Faced with a brutal and beautiful external world, she aims to present combative and strong women while revealing their great inner emotional conflict. Often trapped by their own feelings, it is a constant tug between strength and vulnerability, coldness and sensitivity, well-being, and guilt.
Agnes’ involvement is also ecological: “I raise themes such as the disappearance of species, the importance of caring for our animal world, and the respect every living being deserves. I like to create a complicity between my portraits and selected animals, highlighting the importance of our inter-relationships,” says Agnes.
“What I see on TV, what I read in magazines and newspapers, what I experienced during my many travels around the world and in my private life, and other artists, are all sources of inspiration to allow me to convey an emotion through the image that I create to arouse a reaction in the viewer. Each painting is thus a new beginning, a new way (voice) to express how I feel.”