Isabelle Ménéan
Isabelle Ménéan relies on painting, drawing and sometimes scale to bring forward an imaginatively rich subterranean world. Nature is the central subject of her work, in which animals and plants intertwine in dense and shadowy arrays. The abundance of color gives a festive feeling to her extravagant flowers, fantasy-style animals and her ready-to-burst bouquets.
With an emphasis on watercolor, this technique allows her to incorporate both randomness and precision as well as the delicate details in which the viewer is invited to lose oneself. From Rococo to botanical images, even Japanese prints—these are all sources of inspiration then distorted by the range of the imagination. In this way, her work is reminiscent of art from another time when levity functioned as a mask for melancholy.
After studying at the Ecole d’Arts Appliqués in Lyon (Visual Communication Department), Isabelle Ménéan received her degree in 2008 from Geneva’s Ecole Supérieure des Beaux-Arts (today the HEAD) in painting/drawing. She has been a member of the Verrière Sud association at the Usine Kugler (GE) since 2010 and has taught since 2007 at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts du Genevois (Annemasse, FR). She has exhibited her work on many occasions, both collectively and as a solo artist, in Geneva and Lausanne as well as Grenoble and Arles. She has had two artist’s books published with Editions Ripopée and was included in the Revue Aristide in 2018.
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