IN PICTURES. “I am a woman from the South”, between light and Mediterranean colors, this painter invites us on a journey

Isabelle Zutter is a painter of light. She knows how to capture these moments where shadow and light enhance a setting. The white color is shaded with pink, mauve and blue. His painting takes us on a journey into the Mediterranean atmosphere of the places of his childhood.

Isabelle Zutter, painter, lives and works in Montpellier. She was born and raised there, near the Place de la Comédie and the Fabre Museum, where she went regularly from the age of 12. In front of the paintings of the Montpellier painter Frédéric Bazille, Village view, The pink dress, she feels a sense of déjà vu, of being at home.

We are truly conditioned by our childhood, our familiar world. I am a proud southern woman. So, all these bright colors, all this contrast of light, that’s actually all that carries me

After a Bac A7 plastic art, she studied graphic design in Paris, before turning to painting. She was spotted by Marie-Claire magazine in 1988, which headlined: Isabelle Zutter, a woman artist. About ten years later, she took part in painting courses with François Legrand and Christoff Debusschere, students of the painter Philippe Lejeune at the Etampes school. She shares with them an acute analysis of light, while maintaining her identity as a southern woman.

A subject comes from the small light that falls on an object at a given moment. It’s anecdotal the subject, in fact it’s light first

The color of shadow

Isabelle Zutter’s master was the Spanish painter Joaquin Sorolla (1863-1923), known for his mastery of the color white. Walk by the seapainted in the summer of 1909, is his most famous painting. The color of the shadow is a revelation. The Sorolla style is described as impressionist or even luminaries

When you really look closely at the color matching, you really see real pinks on the ground, real purples in the shadows

For the artist, we never manage to reach the true exterior light but the goal is to get closer to it and capture a precise moment. She perfectly explains how touches of white with a brush will light up a painting.

Applying color to the midday sun

When we look at Isabelle Zutter’s paintings, we feel the heat of the midday. We could listen The ballad of August 75 by Charlélie Couture or Return by Estrella Morente. It is a sensory painting that takes you on a journey through time and space. She does not hesitate to move objects and furniture, to add colored fruits in a bowl to a table, like lemons which will attract the eye with the power of their color. She builds and stages her decor.

In a painting, you have to exaggerate the colors. There, I’m putting down mauves, blues, emerald greens. This is the most important: the way of applying the colors

The painter works from photos and pochades (small format executed on the spot outdoors) which are memory supports. She paints her familiar world, her mazet located between Narbonne and Béziers, the Minorca shed, Louise’s, Sophie’s, the Rayol, Cadaquès… There is in Isabelle Zutter’s painting, a southern soul carried by a dazzling swept light of mistral.