Artospective: Horse Art by Benedicte Gele from France.

An Interview with Benedicte Gele.

Who and where are you from?

I’m Bénédicte Gelé and I come from France. I currently live in an island called Oléron in the west coast.

How you got into this?

I was always fascinated by the drawing since I was young and naturally I wanted to do a job with something which included some sort of drawing. This is how I became graphic designer. But it was not enough for me. I created websites, it was fun and creative but I felt something was missing. Something more personal and a real pen, not a electronic pen and a computer. So I started my personnal research with horses in 2004 with oil or watercolor or charcoal.

What is your driving force?

My subject, the horse of course which is a passion. And my energy which is at the beginning of every painting I do. I need to be balanced and focused to enter in the process of creation.

What kind of work you do and why?

As I have just one subject, I love to try, combine or mix lots of technique like acrylic, charcoal, watercolor, chalk, pastels, oil… I also work the horse like a body. At school, I loved the nude drawing even if it was really hard to capture the shape in a given time. With the horse, I find again all the same difficulties but also the same round shapes, raw body with the bones and the flesh, the volumes, light and shadow.

Tell us more about your thought process.

What is important to me is to keep the motion in the line, to have the minimum of details to keep the the dynamism of the body. Actually, to say more with less. I keep all that in mind when I start a painting.

Please share with us the one modern artist whose work you find Interesting and why?

Since long time, the same artist come to mind. No one after the discovery of his work has as heavily influenced my work so much as him. His name was Ben Ami Koller. His work on the bodies (of course!) and on the portraits touched me deeply with the work of the line, of the deep black tones.