The Paintings of Nathalie du Pasquier

Nathalie du Pasquier makes mole-hills out of mountains, she is a magician who specializes in the topography of the soul. Her paintings are sculpted dreams, they lead us, discreetly, into the hidden orbit of a distant world. The artist did not choose this world, it chose her, and what lies within it may also lie within us. This recital of visual poetry opens our eyes to the dusty, neglected corners of our imagination. We see what she sees and we lose ourselves within her field of vision.
Deserted plains, abandoned cranes, objects lost and found, the passing traffic of a restless mind, a stone giant bending into shadow, lone trees, houses and horses, stout, protective walls without gates, curved horizons brought forwards by the endless trick of a vanishing perspective.
A painterly painter, fingers stained with. the emulsion of her dreams, Nathalie du Pasquier revels in sweet contradictions: symbols which invite and dismiss interpretation; time trapped, both fleeting and infinite, free and frozen, east into stone or laid on a table forever set for two; private gardens growing through the picture frame; the immobile foundations of a transitory world, a steaming tanker stuck in a thick, blue sea, a park bench flying gracefully below a stilled turtle-dove. We who watch can trace a singular mythology, a journey without end, a map-less odyssey and, as we do so, we are privileged with a voyeur's glimpse of the artist's busy sleep.