Artistic statement & approach

Artistic statement

“I’m interested in the painting of portraits because faces are not processed by the brain as mere objects but spontaneously interact with the viewer. Everyday, we automatically perceive a multitude of faces. Each of them gives us both a sense of familiarity and strangeness” says, Sandrine Astier.

Always concerned about the physiognomy of emotions she however experiences portrait painting by trying to free herself from the constraints of hyper-realism, seeking a balance between figuration and abstraction and trying to give all their expressive power to the colours, materials and lines. More specifically, she represents real or fictional people often in close-up, sometimes staged.

She is also concerned about the relationship between painting and music. Immersed in music since childhood, her work is inseparable from it. Her paintings reach out to music by her wish to express feelings through harmonies, rhythms and colours. Through the series of portraits of musicians, Sandrine Astier reflects how she feels when listening to their musical compositions. She makes an effort to establish these artists as icons rather than to make exact copies of them. (more…)