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The Spirit of Nature: A Conversation with Thierry Zarcone

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2024

Fabienne Verdier
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Abstract

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In a poetic conversation with Thierry Zarcone, the painter and calligrapher Fabienne Verdier exposes her deep and harmonious connection to nature. She tells of her garden, her house and her osmosis with nature. Painting is to her an art of living and being that recalls the Tao masters as well as some Christan mystics.

Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 52 , Issue 3 , August 2005 , pp. 93 - 105
Copyright
Copyright © ICPHS 2005

References

Notes

1. Fabienne Verdier (2003), Passagère du silence. Dix ans d’initiation en Chine (Paris, Albin Michel, 293 pages): in this book Fabienne Verdier tells of the early days of learning to paint in the 1980s in France, then in China, where that study was complemented by an initiation into Chinese mystical thought, its arts, its aesthetic, and even its way of life. Fabienne Verdier began to learn calligraphy, seal-making, preparation of materials and several painting techniques. She also writes about the difficulties encountered during her stay and speaks for several traditional Chinese painters and their dramatic story. The book is a spiritual and artistic quest, a sociological study and the story of two Chinas, the old and the new (Editor’s note).

Fabienne Verdier (2004), L’Unique Trait de pinceau. Calligraphie, peinture et pensée chinoise (Paris, Albin Michel, 188 pages): is Fabienne Verdier’s ‘silent book’, which is complementary to Passagère du silence; just a few thoughts taken from Chinese philosophy and chosen by the author illustrate the 100 or so paintings presented here. The reader discovers her calligraphy, her way of pinning down the mystery of plants and the secrets of stone. Though monochrome painting predominates with a tendency towards red, which is so powerful in China, we are no less surprised by an indefinable blue, a beige ochre and a refreshing green bursting in. But the soul of the colour lies in the surface, which is very important for Fabienne Verdier; indeed we need to see the colour behind the colour, in the ribs, striations, cracking or piqué of the silk or linen/cotton canvases or the xuanzhi papers (Editor’s note).

2. Most of the texts in quotation marks are taken from the autobiographical book by Fabienne Verdier Passagère du silence, op. cit. (when they are not, a note gives details of their source). The paintings by Fabienne Verdier mentioned in the text are reproduced in her book L’Unique Trait de pinceau, op. cit.

3. Words recorded by Jean-Pierre Frimbois (Art Actuel).

4. L’Unique Trait de pinceau, op. cit., p. 159.

5. Ibid., pp. 165-75.

6. Ibid., pp. 41, 73-7.

7. Éditions Paroles d’Aube, 1995.

8. Éditions Voix d’Encre, 1997.

9. Words recorded by Jean-Pierre Frimbois (Art Actuel).