Nude and erotic photography succeeds most easily in conveying that tension of bodies and the warmth of skin. It is more difficult to do this with a tool that has to build up the warmth, to make people imagine it, such as a pencil or a coloured crayon.
The French artist Marie Casaÿs creates portraits with a photographic cut of scenes of intimate involvement, seen from the perspective of the person looking at the works, creating a sense of participation in the scene that is almost alienating, almost guilting the spectator.






The tips of the crayons draw traces of different intensities. Thick grooves when they trace the outline of the strings that hold the body, soft shades when they have to represent the shiver that runs over the surface of the skin when caressed by a hand.
Marie Casaÿs’ colour palette is that of a child approaching drawing for the first time: red, pink, orange, yellow, blue, all juxtaposed without any pretense of realism until they fade into each other.
The body is the starting point for the artist’s works, seen as sex from behind, caught in natural, spontaneous gestures. The decisive profiles show a physicality that is not always conventional or in line with the way the nude has been represented in classical art.



