Looking at Claude Bauret Allard’s pastels invites us on a far away trip.
An interior voyage – a dream voyage – a real voyage. Because it’s about space, light, movement, and also places off the map, timeless moments.
The source of inspiration is figurative, but the representation is never anecdotic. The subject is as if transcended on route to become nothing more than painting, emotion, vibration.
The subtlety and substance of pastel colours are perfect for this project. Pure pigments, unaltered by the medium of oil or acrylic, are applied alive, still vibrating like the wings of a butterfly, unchanging, inalterable.
Many great painter's works of the past have already taught us to look at and recognise this specific pastel light; those of Claude Bauret Allard likewise carry us into the jubilation of colour. The emanating light is the subject itself - wildfire flames, veiled suns, the moving vividness of fields or vibrating remanences. The viewer wanders alone, meeting no other living soul – the subject is not nature where man could be present or absent, it is absolute space, for a second and forever, an entity felt within oneself, like a prolific or threatening factor.
There’s a game of strength between the painting which joyfully, powerfully or reservedly uses pastels of such wide-ranging colours, sometimes violent like these pure reds, or these intense blues, and sometimes unequally tender with names like images, as in a Claude Simon's book – almond green, amaranth pink, Avignon or Cassel earth, or simply lemon yellow – so, this game of strength between the painting and what is to be said and felt, reminding us of everything the painter is, her vision, emotions, deepest thoughts, conscious or not – this is the game that makes a painting.
Whoever looks at Claude Bauret Allard’s paintings is firstly attracted by their plasticity, then, little by little, they come to life, with calm and silence, sometimes even with discretion, becoming moving, threatening, the fire seems stirred up, the clouds flee, pushed by the wind, the stream flows, emotions come to the surface, the voyage begins...
