“The house of the one who paints” is hers: Danielle, 91, has made her life a work of art

In the small village of Pont-de-l’Étoile, a hamlet in Bouches-du-Rhône dependent on the commune of Roquevaire, there is a magical house, straight out of a fairy tale, which we owe to Danielle Jacqui, a collector of outsider art having entirely decorated her house with her paintings, sculptures, ceramics and embroidery. This facade of a thousand colors, as we can see in the TF1 subject at the top of this article, reveals a fantastic world, decorated with imaginary characters springing up before the hypnotized eyes of passers-by: “When we pass by with my children, they love to touch, they like to see a little of the materials, the colors. It’s intriguing, we don’t really know what it is, if it’s a real house, if it’s ‘is a museum’says a resident interviewed and intrigued.

This quirky palace is run by this funny 91-year-old princess. A former second-hand dealer who blends into the background and who has spent her entire life transforming her house into a work of art. Painting, sculpture and mosaic cover his house from floor to ceiling, even on his clothes. It’s the work of a lifetime. “My work is a child that I made all alone,” she slips into the subject above. As can be seen in the images showing the lair, it is sometimes difficult to make your way from one room to another. Everything is a work of art here, even his refrigerator. “I have never been normal. You expect me to be a normal woman. Which does not mean that I am abnormal. But which means that in relation to the whole, I exist abnormally”she said.

This is something that must be protected for each of us.

Danielle Jacqui is a pioneer. For more than 50 years, she has never stopped creating. Even today, she paints every day: “We are artists or we are not. We are not in one category or another. Because painting is not made to be good or not good, it is made to be felt or not.” His house contains more than a thousand works of all kinds, some of which represent a titanic effort. “I would like my work to be protected, but we don’t decide the future. I do everything I can. Then the others will decide. That’s the norm.”

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For her house to one day be listed, Danielle Jacqui can count on the support of her friends, like Fred, a great admirer of the artist. “Each little piece, each stone, each piece of crockery, becomes an animated object, full of poetry, full of humanity”, he summarizes in the 1 p.m. topic. The latter shows Danielle’s shed. An immense cave of Ali Baba: “What I feel is that it’s really a source of creativity. There are no limits.” For this close friend of the artist, it is necessary to protect this cultural heritage: “It’s a sacred temple. Everything is sacred. It’s something that must be protected for each of us.” This house is called “the house of the one who paints”. And when the one who paints no longer lives there, she wants the doors to be open to the public.