Galerie de portraits

In ‘Galerie de portraits’, Marie Andre sketches the portraits of five women from among her closest friends and family (including her grandmother and daughter), composing an intimate, intensely private space. Her eloquent compositions focus on the quotidian, the richness inherent in such everyday gestures as watering a plant, lighting a cigarette, stirring a cup of tea. A ‘portrait’ of a woman is drawn from a corner of her room, the objects on her table, or the view onto which she gazes from a window. Andre, master of the subtle romance of the everyday, distils only what is essential — still life’s, nuances, spaces, the rhythm of voices — to obliquely portray the personal essence of the women and convey the intimacy between the artist and her female subjects.