Anne-Lise Courchay ©
Portrait
Beyond reading, discovering the immense and labyrinthine universe of the book marked, for Anne-Lise Courchay, the beginning of a long journey. From practicing rigorous hand binding techniques to emancipating herself in the elaboration of her own decorative techniques, better adapted to the whims of parchment, she finally returned to the essentials: a book is a portable and readable text. The text has become a combination of graphic signs and the book a simplified assembly of pages. These are wordless picture books, designed to be read in all languages, or rather in all languages. Small images evoke very natural situations of life on earth. Regardless of the reader's age, cultural, religious or ethnic background, or gender, there is no imposed meaning, just a rebus and winks. The sun, the moon, the stars, animals, plants, climatic situations, light and water, all of this is translated into droplets of colored inks, to illustrate the cycles of life on earth.
"The drawing is a writing that allows access to the foundations of human thought, it is the essence of a shared memory."
Parchment is an extraordinary material. Light is diffracted in the thin thickness of this animal skin. It diffuses through the transparency of the shellac-based inks, giving each drop an astonishing presence and volume. The elements of the drawing float on the surface of the parchment, better illuminating the reader's gaze. Dot after dot of raw color jostles against each other. Dot after dot, colorful moods build up. Dot after dot, motifs repeat themselves in a geometric yet organic pattern. The eye keeps zooming from shapes to molecules, from molecules to atoms. There's so much to see on a single page.
Lauréate du Prix Liliane Bettencourt pour l'Intelligence de la Main® 2003 En savoir plus
