Eugenie Paultre

Matter of Life is the story of a six-month residency from French painter, poet and philosopher Eugénie Paultre written and illustrated by the artist and published in a colorfully illustrated paperback book.
In the spring of 2018, Paultre relocated from her studio in Paris to a workshop in the English countryside. Immersed in her practice with line and pigment, this intensive residency allowed the artist to enlarge the scale of her paintings and work on large canvases up to four meters tall—an assignment which presented physical as well as philosophical confrontations between the artist and the blank canvas. Paultre’s abstract works feature carefully selected lines of color that create beautifully balanced and evocative paintings.
Matter of Life showcases a remarkable new series of contemporary paintings and features text written by the artist with ruminations on color and its language as well as reflections on art, and by that very fact, on matters of life.
Recalling her personal encounters—from her conversations with artist and poet Etel Adnan and notes from the poetic works of Stéphane Mallarmé and Charles Baudelaire to observing antagonisms of the modern world and moments of clarity in view of natural landscapes—Paultre shows a profound connection to the world around her and, in this book, considers what it means to make something of life and to do something worthwhile.

The first monograph on the art of the celebrated French poet, painter and philosopher Eugénie Paultre (born 1979), Outline presents 80 of Paultre’s recent abstract paintings and drawings, created in 2016 and 2017. A master of chromatic tension, Paultre carefully applies vertical lines of colors—ranging from clusters of somber blues and blacks to warm combinations of oranges, reds and yellows—that accumulate into powerfully meditative prismatic works suggesting a variety of emotional tones, as well as painterly precedents from Paul Klee and Agnes Martin to Etel Adnan. This clothbound volume features an introductory text by Emmanuel Daydé and notes by Paultre in both English and French. Among Paultre's previous publications are Winter (Post-Apollo Press, 2014).