Hélène Simone is a committed artist whose mission in this series of paintings is to make the viewer aware of the most recent fires that have devastated the forests on the planet. Canvas by canvas, tree by tree, she rebuilds the forest in her own way through her pictorial language.
Each tree becomes a call to eco-lucidity, to an awareness of our collective issues. This body of work is a combination of ethics and aesthetics. Hélène Simone’s paintings propel us into a mythical, colorful and poetic universe with the goal of emphasizing the regeneration of flora. Her painting oscillates between the figurative and the abstract by creating portraits of trees in an arboreal atmosphere that transports the observer into a universe that is both joyful and melancholy.
These large-format canvases are painted in oils and made from drawings and studies inspired by a visit to the Botanical Garden of Deshaies in Guadeloupe during an expedition in the Caribbean. Hélène Simone stands out for her love of nature and her sense of adventure in discovering our planet.
These dynamic compositions, in explosions of pure colors, applied with large fluid strokes depict a Baobab trunk, imposing and majestic but at the same time vulnerable. This same subject repeated in the bucolic series produces images that abound in unexpected elements that translate the intangible.
The baobab is a prehistoric species that emerged before humans. It symbolizes life. The baobab is a tree that survives in extremely dry and arid climates. It stores water during the rainy season to bear fruit in the dry season. Its fruits are rot-proof because they dry directly on the tree for about 6 months with a skin resembling a coconut. The Baobab can live up to 5,000 years and reach 30 meters in height and 50 meters in circumference. Despite all this strength, the Baobab remains vulnerable to climate change.
This series is a cry of alarm to draw attention to the environmental burden we carry and the urgency of changing our way of life in the hope of a brighter future.
