the essential
Jeanne Lacombe, an artist from Toulouse, has just hung her pictorial works on the walls of the Réplique gallery in Rodez, and is also presenting her work as a ceramicist.
Summer has begun. And to immerse yourself in it, there is nothing better than an invitation to travel and discover the wide open spaces with sumptuous vegetation where infinitely exotic landscapes can be seen…
Born in Dakar, Jeanne Lacombe left Senegal at the age of eight to come to France. A graduate of the Bordeaux School of Fine Arts in 1984, the artist currently resides in Toulouse.
For many years she has continued her artistic work which alternates with various disciplines such as painting, photography and ceramics. Her childhood was spent in Saint-Louis-du-Sénégal. However, her favorite place remained the garden where she could observe a chameleon or the lush vegetation for hours and then as soon as night fell, she liked to watch the birds in the sky and listen to their shrill cries before all these birds landed in the trees. Later, it was the frogs who lulled her in her childhood sleep thanks to this very specific song which belongs to amphibians. But, the boarding school in Rodez, for ten years, separated her from her family and holidays in Dakar obviously became increasingly rare. This family and geographical distance, however, forged the young girl’s mind. “Little by little I freed myself from this period, I rediscovered the sensations of my early childhood strongly anchored in me. This curiosity that I had for nature, I put it in parallel with my taste for painting, it is my breath, my hobbyhorse, it fascinates me and I made it the path of my life. Over time I associated painting with photography as well as ceramics, as you can see with my creations presented at the Réplique gallery.”
A cosmopolitan world
Her sixteen-month stay at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris immersed her in a cultural and cosmopolitan world, because during her career, Jeanne Lacombe had several opportunities to participate in collaborative projects. Notably residencies in Istanbul and Tangier or even in Holland. “My three-month residency in Oisterwijk, in the Netherlands with international artists, gave me a lot of possibilities in experimentation as much in the way of using clay as enamel in a choice of colors that was exceptional.”
Very quickly, new creations will result, and under the name of Mannerism – which is reminiscent of the artistic movement of the 16th and 17th centuries – will also be the name given to one of Jeanne Lacombe’s drawings, part of a polyptych that served as a model for her last ceramic pieces. For these creations, several stages were necessary. First, the manufacture of the molds which was scheduled in Toulouse, then the shading and application of the enamel which was carried out at the Tarbes School of Art and Design. Her ceramics were exhibited in 2023, at La Fabrique, near the University of Toulouse.
Winner of the competition for the construction of the future third line of the Toulouse metro, Jeanne Lacombe presented a project on the theme of gardens.
The first stage of this creation was an oil on canvas before being conceptualized in ceramic comprising 144 stoneware plates measuring 60/60 centimeters. “It is a large ceramic fresco, 10.80 meters long and 4.80 meters high, which will be produced at Craft* in Limoges for the research of colors and the application of the enamel. The Green Gardener’s Bench and blue, which represents the second part of the project is a concrete parallelepiped where small ceramic tiles will be placed. There will be four of them: two on each side of the platforms” explains the Toulouse artist. Furthermore, a documentary is being prepared with a director and a producer. “It will be about my artistic work in connection with my personal history and at the same time, the metro project, filmed in its progress, until its installation in the Ormeau station.”
In the meantime, the exhibition at the Galerie Réplique, in Rodez, is visible until July 6, Fridays from 3 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. and Saturdays from 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. and from 3 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. , at 42, rue de l’Embergue.
*A contemporary creation workshop, Craft (Research Center on the Arts of Fire and Earth), invites creators of all nationalities with varied practices to reinvent and develop projects around ceramic materials. Once the project is finalized, one work returns to the artist and another enters the Craft collection.
