Marie Lenclos

I am originally from Paris. I came to London to study Graphic Design at Camberwell College of Art in 1995. I’ve made my life in London since.

I paint with oils. I came back to painting in 2015, after an absence of almost 20 years. I love the smells and textures associated with oil paint. They make painting a sensorial experience and I can't quite imagine using anything else as a medium.

I started painting at 13 years old thanks to my dad, who was mostly a ‘summer holiday painter’. He introduced me to painting through the practice of observational still lives and self-portraits. Alongside this, I sometimes worked at his colour design studio, where I’d spend hours cutting and sticking very precise bits of Pantone card to make into 2D models of streets and cities.

It’s perhaps no wonder then that the strand of my work I am particularly developing at the moment is urban landscapes and buildings. I base these on places I encounter as I walk or cycle around London. Some of these are very familiar places and come back repeatedly, such as the bridges near my studio in Loughborough Junction.

Others come to me suddenly, taking me by surprise. 

I was a documentary video maker for around 12 years. This made me very conscious of the way I looked at the city around me. I suppose I got used to 'framing' things all the time, even without a camera. Walking around I would suddenly see something and think: 'this would make a good shot'. Now, I see something and I think: 'there is a painting in this'. 

So naturally, I use photographs as a starting point for my painting process. The photos capture a 'moment of seeing', when the painting idea comes into being. A moment when lines, light, colours and shapes all fall into a particular order that suddenly makes sense to me. 

The painting itself develops during the drawing stage, when I make marks on the canvas with a biro. Reality is simplified, and perspectives become my own. I then spend a lot of time on the colour, the gradients and the light – working and reworking areas and shapes in relation to each other.

Another strand of my work is The Trees: I still holiday in the same place in Brittany, where I started painting when I was 13 or 14. There, I always paint the same group of tall pine trees from life. It’s a body of work I started around 10 years ago. So far I must have painted around 60 paintings of the same group of trees. I look at them from the open window of the little attic studio I have in our family home, and try to paint what I see. Painting from observation takes me to unsuspected places in terms of mark making, colour and composition.

Please contact me if you are interested in visiting my studio to see a painting or two. I always encourage potential collectors to come and see the work in the flesh, as photos just don’t do paintings justice. Their scale and presence can only be experienced in real life.