Pauline Bachel is an artist who looks at the world with dreamlike eyes and transcribes her particular vision into sincere drawings that carry a mystical aura. Her works are inspired by the culture of her island, the Creole, and celebrate the almost rarefied exoticism of lush poetry, graceful naked bodies, nature far away from us and sublime femininity.

Pauline Bachel’s artistic world lives in the lush jungle of the tropics where she was born. Her love for nature becomes, in a deeper way, a love for the state of nature of things, where the characters, objects, shapes and colours that live in her paintings and illustrations can be brought back to an almost “pure” artistic universe, free from modernity or its effects. 

Particularly interesting is also the artist’s choice to use watercolour as the main medium of her works because “it is very playful, with its games of transparency, superimposition and shading.”

In such a friendly and clear world, where there are no conceptual superstructures or anything else, the large presence of female figures is fascinating. As she herself says, “the theme of women came naturally to me, without me asking myself too many questions. I have always drawn them. It is a recurring element in the history of painting; women inspire me with great delicacy and I like to represent them in a contemplative way’.

Looking at her work, it is impossible not to notice a great influence from the post-impressionist painting of the late 19th century: Gauguin and Rousseau are just some of the artists who influenced her style. Gauguin can be found in the delicacy with which she treats and admires the female figure, while the Doganer Rosseau is certainly a source of inspiration for moving the imagination and giving it the possibility to show not the jungle, but the jungle she sees and wants to represent. 

“Yes, always creole. I’m very attached to my island, its forms, its culture and its people.”

Autore: Francesco Fusi