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Martine Le Normand - Artiste Peintre
La place faite à l'insu et au Temps


Le travail de Martine Le Normand était exposé par les amis libraires du Cadran Lunaire à Mâcon lorsque je suis venue y présenter mon dernier livre, « L’enfant qui ». Il y a dans nos vies ainsi des tissages heureux. La rencontre a donc eu lieu.

Ce que j’aime dans ce travail, c’est la place faite à l’insu et au temps.
J’aime l’absence d’intention qui est le seul socle solide pour que quelque chose advienne.
Pas d’intention donc, ni de désir de représenter quoi que ce soit, mais une attention profonde à ce qui a lieu.

J’imagine que Martine Le Normand doit contempler longtemps ce qui se passe entre le support et la rouille avant de se mettre, elle, à accompagner le processus avec la couleur.
Il faut de l’humilité pour cela. Avoir compris qu’on ne « crée » que ce qui se révèle. Avoir appris à concevoir l’infrastructure pour que cela puisse avoir lieu.
Il faut aussi de la subtilité pour choisir les couleurs et les traits qui pourront s’allier aux empreintes laissées sur le support pour aller vers l’œuvre.

Il s’agit bien ici de l’art comme alliance. Alliance avec le temps, l’usure et ses formes.
L’imaginaire est à l’œuvre. Celui de la femme qui peint bien sûr mais aussi le nôtre. Contemplant à notre tour, nous pouvons nous laisser porter par le temps. Une main humaine nous le permet. La main de celle qui a mis tout son art à frayer ce passage pour nos rêves. Je l’en remercie.

Jeanne Benameur
Ecrivain






A painting that reconciles soul and heart


What is immanence in painting but that which is revealed ? In Martine le Normand's painting, revelation is intrinsically cosmic and one would be hard put to detect any psychoanalytical influence. It is about traces, sparkles of star or moon dust, seemingly echoing an ocean of earthly sand with its brown and yellow dots and spots, shaping a wave-like, forever moving, picture...

People who come to Martine le Normand's exhibitions say they feel in unison with this world of warm colours. The reason lies in a psychological balance that gets precisely organized beyond the very forces that should be fighting each other but never do, displaying shapes constantly changing but always in harmony. Maybe one should talk about «suspension», like those grains of sand that you lift as you walk on the beach but actually remain stuck to your heels...

But there, and this is what gives her painting its originality, this suspension continues into the sky, a sky at once real, with its dark colour and its spots of light, but also imaginary, an inner sky, all hers...

It is undoubtedly this inner sky that strikes most visitors for it is like no other. It belongs both to the unholy and to the sacred, close and distant while remaining within reach of senses and beyond sense. A story seems unfolding, like the ones you see on satellite images, and this is not the least surprising. Something therefore that comes from above and nonetheless also from within. «The Powers from Within» (Les Puissances du dedans) is incidentally the title of a book by our common friend Michel Random.

As to the father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, he might have seen in these paintings a harmony relationship between inside and outside. In which case, he would unquestionably have been right...

The painting of Martine le Normand is a cure against melancholy because it shapes a ripening universe, a universe tending towards equilibrium and which, obviously, was already existing, hidden, but that the true artist knew how to make palpable. Even better, immanent !
As you go along the exhibition, to your great surprise, this unconscious universe reaches your consciousness without warning and you realize that you have difficulty getting out of it, that you don't even want to get out of it, because it heals you !
These painting have a lot in common with the Navajos sandpainting. It is first and foremost a painting that reconciles soul and heart !

Virgile de la Grange
Poet Writer