Artospective: Portraits by Clare Trevens.

An Interview with Clare Trevens.

Who and where are you from?

My name is Clare Trevens and I am a French artist who lives in Southern France (Provence).

What brought you to Art?

I discovered painting thanks to my grandmother who was a painter as well and who gave me my first paintbrush (in this way initiating the interest I developed afterwards in painting).

What is your driving force?

At this stage the driving force is no longer definable. My interest is to push further into the experiment and the unknown. It's like a will to find whatever you haven't found yet, a personal quest for something you know is there but still invisible at the moment.

What kind of work you do and why?

I paint people, portraits, faces. I can't resume myself to represent something else because I'm inexplicably drawn to it. A human being is complex enough in themselves to offer a wide range of emotions, contradictions and subtlety. I sometimes enjoy looking at a landscape painting or a still life, but I wouldn't paint this kind of subject. Human is enough for me.

Tell us more about your thought process.

I start with a vague idea of what I'd like to do, a creative concept I'd like to explore (like painting human puppets for instance). Then I work around this idea. The models are not really important, they are just an excuse to represent emotions. That's why I consider all of the portraits I make as self-portraits. They may not represent me but I know I transfused a bit of myself in them. Painting as a cathartic process is not a novelty.

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

My favourite artists of the moment are Otero Carbonell and Henrik Uldalen, two major figurative painters. Their skills are no longer to be demonstrated anymore.