Jeanne Isabelle Cornière

 
Sumi-è watercolors

“Images of the flowers world”
Water-colors inspired to the Japanese technique sumi-è

« To paint flowers, is imitate what nature has of most pleasent and most fascinating ; flowers seems in fact created for seducing the eyes, and it's to the painter, in particular to the water-colorist, to pay a tribute to their beauty ».

Henry Guédy, Nuovo manuale completo di pittura ad acquarello, 1903.

These water-colors that have essentially a decorative vocation, were born from the artist's interest for Asian art, and more particularly for the technique of the Japanese « zen » painting, said Sumi-e.The technique as well as the thematic have this source of common inspiration in her work.

Japanese art has influenced French painters since the end of the XIX century : not only the impressionists (the renowned Ninfees of Monet or the series of almond tree in flower of Van Gogh) but also Nabis's painters.

Realized with a process inspired to Sumi-e painting, these water-colors are centered on the floral world and what is connected to it (insects, fishes...). We can find some recurrent subjects of the universe of Asian engravings ukiyoe ("The fluctuating world") : giant peonies (China's flower), flowers of lotus, orchids, dragonflies in flight and red carps.

To these subjects, other inspiring images more frequent in the botanical imagery (like poppies, dandelions, iris and butterflies), or in the italian cinquecento still lives (1), are added. In the series of monochrome water-colors, the views in first plan also refers to the modern and geometric compositions of Carl Blossfeldt's botanical photos.

In general, the shots exalt the asymmetry and marry oblong sizes typical of the Asian culture, using the white spaces as full forms. Finally, as in the “zen” painting, the realization is gestural. Every form is created by a gesture studied on purpose. The search is that of the essentialness, of the simplicity and of the naturalness directed to reveal the essence of the things.

A formal simplicity that we can, in such sense, unite to the condensed language of the “haiku's” poems.
A search illustrated in the words of an ancient "zen" painter that was asked how much time he had employed for painting the image of a bamboo. He answered : "fifty years to study it, five minutes to paint it”.

Jeanne Isabelle Cornière

 

Notes
(1) - Particularly Giovanna Garzoni's tempera still lives full of butterflies and insects.