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CATHERINE GRAN was born in 1966. She began her academic studies with courses in History of Art at the Sorbonne University, Paris. She then went on to the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, from where she graduated in 1992. Her paintings are enigmatic, conveying an atmosphere of strangeness and eccentricity through unexpected perspectives and unusual objects combined with the commonplace and the fantastic. She continues to explore her favourite enigmatic themes of the bizarre and the surreal represented by the incongruous relationship between objects, form and figures. Yet at the same time she paints in a scrupulously detailed manner to give a hallucinatory sense of reality. Her work borders on the surreal and is often concerned with organic and sensual form and also, on occasion symbolist, characterised by visual expression of emotional experience. The elegant figures, smartly dressed almost theatrical in demeanour, retain their nobility and quirky expressions. They are the cognoscenti basking in their appreciation and love of life and the arts. Gran’s paintings, with their unusual perspectives and ambiguous combinations of shapes, objects, and figures are depicted in a singular painterly style, reinforcing her ability to create disorientating realist imagery which is thought provoking and compelling.
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