Véronique Héquet Grotard will be presenting her exhibition “Childhood Seeds”. The artist’s word:
«Graines d'enfance» retraces my artistic journey that took its roots in the mining basin of northern France, between Valenciennes and Denaisis. During my youth, surrounded by a family of solidarity, we gravitated around my parents' café, leaving me with a range of happy memories. Each of the people I met sowed in me a part of herself, which in this world, looks like nuggets of happiness. Parents and grandparents, uncles and aunts, each one gave me intentions, because they transmitted to me gestures and know-how that I still reproduce. By sharing their passions I continue to make them live because these founding roots grow in me. There were women, there were men, all courageous and active, who counted neither their time nor their knowledge. There were works of interior, decoration or creation, and those who worked outside, returning to leisure the earth to make it nourishing or flowering. Very early I did manual activities, needle works, transforming materials and developing my small creative projects. No trouble, I always occupied hands and mind! I discovered the colors and shapes that surrounded me, in the catalogues of wallpaper, with fabrics or outside, through nature. That of walks or games in these gardens, to contemplate and smell the flowers, to be moved by the flight of butterflies and other creatures as intriguing as pretty. My cultural field is twofold, my cradle was laid in this mining village where coal was extracted with labor from the veins of the earth and yet my childhood was colorful, joyful, so easy to live. The black mouths were no longer active, the headframe already dismantled, only the terril and the corons attest to this past state of affairs. Later, during my art studies, I paid tribute to the mine and the miners. It was at the same time that I discovered, «for real», the colorful universe of Henri Matisse. A student at the École supérieure d'art de Cambrai, I went to Cateau-Cambrésis and was absorbed by his works: what colours, what audacity, what wonder! As you will have understood, my «Childhood Seeds» have founded the foundations of my personality and my art, I feel privileged to be exhibited in the family house Matisse. This is where little Henri, who has become such a great artist, grew up, and I like to think that he too was immersed in two worlds: with Émile, his father, in the seed trade, and with Anna, his mother, in the textile world. You might as well admit how moved and honored I am to go through this founding place in Bohain-en-Vermandois. Is everything from childhood? In any case, this is the path I followed! Today I would like to pay tribute to all those people who since my childhood have cultivated and accompanied my creations dotted with their «parcels of being» because, without them, I will not be the one who reveals through the creations here exhibited. They are «polymorphic» and are often based on my photographs. I also use his painting, drawing, engraving, I adapt the tools, gestures to my desires. Ceramicist, my clay or porcelain pieces unfold in volume or are embroidered on canvases, I play with the techniques and with the materials at my pleasure, I combine and combine, art allows me to realize everything, I take this freedom to inspire myself and invent worlds where I navigate between real and imaginary, one and the other meet.
Véronique Héquet Grotard