Last year (September 2020) between two Covid confinement periods I welcomed a large number of visitors to my parent’s exhibition that lasted a little over a month at the Craft Espace Art Gallery in Dieulefit. Considering the sanitary situation, contrary to expectations it was a great success and I enjoyed seeing the reactions of people while they were looking around for it seemed to give them a kick and have a positive effect on their moods. In this respect it was noteworthy that there was a psychotherapist who even remarked that it would be helpful if a few of the works were to hang in his consultation room!
Being their daughter, I am of course biased. I love my parent’s work and for some time I had been playing around with the idea of creating a web site that could both serve as an archive and lasting memory of their creative lives as well as providing access to their work by a wider public.
My parents required some convincing for they would never have considered doing this themselves. Happily, they finally gave in to a daughter’s wish. There is a lot to browse through, but I am convinced that there is something featured on the site of appeal to each and everybody.
My parents are creative souls; they always were, and they always will be, and they are proof that creativity need never stop!
Below, some thoughts about art and living together by my father.
Karin Félix-Faure
Laurent and Anke
Not so long ago a friend asked me whether making art had played a role in our relationship as a couple, suggesting that it might explain why it has been a long and happy one. I had never stopped to consider things from this angle. To be sure Anke and I spent much time looking at art together and meeting many artists, some of whom became long-time friends. Our bookcases are stacked full of art books and the considerable number of paintings by various painters we enjoy and that inspire us hang on the walls of our home. One might well wonder if our enthusiasm has contributed to the pleasure we have of being together – which we have been for many, many years. Of course, there are a host of other reasons but sharing the same interest, exchanging thoughts and impressions about the works we come across and about those who make them undeniably has a strong bonding effect.
After she left school Anke would have liked to go to art school. I am afraid I was partly responsible for having thwarted her wish. She was 17 years old and I was 18. Three years later we married, we went abroad and we had three children. Anke went on to become a successful writer of books for children and young adults. However, the desire to create things with her hands persisted and she took up making and exhibiting collages. As for me I was always drawn to art and during my professional work for an international federation I visited many countries and I always took a sketchbook and a watercolour pad along with me. I also followed courses at the Royal Academy for Fine Arts in The Hague where I was stationed. After my retirement, with more time on my hands, I wrote some books about art and I painted and exhibited regularly.Coming back to how our involvement in art affects our relationship, interestingly, what we make, and our approach are diametrically opposed. Anke’s collages are perfectly original, which might not have been the case if she had attended art school. Nobody taught her how to go about making them and she is not directly influenced by other collage artists. They are born in her mind and result in subtle, well-balanced and highly aesthetic compositions. My paintings are more down to earth and inspired by what I see around me. They are definitely influenced by the work of painters I admire but the need to paint comes from an inner drive that make my paintings my own.
Although our art is different, when put side by side what we make harmonises, like our personalities. In answer therefore to my friend’s question above, the conclusion can perhaps be drawn that complementarity can favour a good and long-standing relationship. Who knows?
Laurent Félix-Faure