World Fine Art Professionals and their Key-Pieces, 388 - Elisabeth Vuez

World Fine Art Professionals and their Key-Pieces, 388 – Elisabeth Vuez
I recently saw the exhibition ‘I take you on a journey!’ in Galerie44, with landscape drawings by Elisabeth Vuez. Elisabeth gave me a short tour of her ink drawings with images of various countries in Asia and of Vouglans in the Jura, her native region.

Elisabeth: “I have a good visual memory and when I close my eyes, I am back in the landscape I want to see. When I was homesick for the Jura, I taught myself this possibility. I make a lot of sketches on the spot. In the elaboration it is less about a realistic image, but more about the feeling I had that moment.”

Japan
I see, except for the Jura and Iceland, Bali, Java, Vietnam and Japan through her eyes. The latter country in particular made a deep impression, she says. “I have visited the country twice, each time for three weeks. It brought me back to my grandmother (born 1895), my mother’s mother who witnessed the beginnings of Japanism in France and who knew Japanese artists and poets who came to France. When my grandparents passed away I was 5 years old but I remember that Japanese stuff was with them and I found it ‘different’ from other stuff and very intriguing.”

The original plan was to go to Japan with her mother and daughters, but her mother died before it could happen. “My youngest daughter went on a honeymoon to Japan. We traveled through Japan with my oldest daughter. I find the lines that are drawn in the gravel by monks and then wiped away again fascinating. After my second trip to Japan in October 2019, I only drew lines in various circles for almost two years. Because of Corona Japan remained closed but with my line/circle drawings I was a bit there.”

Etching
Elisabeth has been creative from an early age. Born in the French Jura, she attended a special art-oriented secondary school in Besançon as a child. She continued her studies at the University of Strasbourg and then studied for her master’s degree at the University of Paris. At the Free Academy in The Hague she followed several courses in graphic techniques.

Initially, Elisabeth made many etchings, using aquatint and other intaglio etching techniques with deep grooves and large lines. Because Elisabeth is not interested in the larger editions usually made of etchings, she switched to oil painting and started water colouring again.
She has been making watercolors since she was 15. She started to miss etching more and more and as a result she has mainly made drawings with ink in recent years, whereby the scratching of a pen on paper gives her the feeling of etching again.

The landscape
The landscape is important to her for three reasons. Firstly because of the atmosphere, the depth, height and the feelings that come with it. In addition, the rhythm, expressed in the lines. “Lines have been prominent in my work in recent years. I have been making etchings for 25 years and a few years ago I kept missing the deep and large lines that I could make through intaglio etching technique.” And finally, she would like to capture the dynamics in the landscape.

It is not an exact representation of reality but an investigation into the limits of the abstract and the figurative, she says. “Details always grab my attention. I work with lines, structure, lines of force and small elements in between. That way I can concentrate on the composition. You have to take many steps in a landscape to understand the meaning of nature and also its spirituality.”

Ars Aemula
After her trip to Iceland last July, she started working with colors again. “I didn’t know Iceland could be so colorful that the landscapes there could be so different.”
Since 1995 Elisabeth regularly participates in exhibitions (solo and in groups) in the Netherlands. Since May 2017 she has been a working member at Ars Aemula in Leiden and since 2010 she has been participating in the Kunstroute in Leiden at the end of September. From time to time her works are bought by enthusiasts and collectors. For many years she also had a job as a French teacher and translator.

Finally, does she have a nice philosophical conclusion?
She has. “My travels to Japan have changed my search for beauty. In Japanese, the word mountain means ‘water landscape’ because life takes place between those two elements. It flows, as it were, like a journey. A journey through a landscape in which people live, and which I feel and perceive.”

https://www.elisabethvuez.nl/
https://www.instagram.com/elisabethvuez/?hl=nl
https://arsaemula.nl/elisabeth-vuez/
https://ifthenisnow.eu/nl/verhalen/de-wereld-van-de-leidse-kunstenaar-4-elisabeth-vuez