A recent visit to the studio of Bertille de Baudinière spontaneously puts my feet back on earth.
I see full-square the positioning of our planet, inscribing its circularity in the heart of the canvas squares that frame this work. The pictorial material is in fact the earth itself, which when mixed with casein paradoxically becomes as fluid as tidal silt, at the shifting limit between continents and oceans. Each work wears green in order to absorb the natural pigments from many countries, illuminated by the light or penetrated by the shadows of their geographic origins. I find pleasure in navigating a dialog with these conflicting approaches between floating islands, which bear witness in spite of their mineral material to the overriding presence of the oceans, that allow our continents to anchor themselves as calmly as giant ships.
A series baptized Green Earth thus proposes to go "the ends of the earth" in order to go from a web-like path on an oriental land (n° 88), to a meditative position on Italian soil, which gently floats above a brilliant bubbling sparkle (n° 101). I become green with fear when the soil of the Sahara lands heavily before my eyes on a canvas that affirms the horizontality of that desert space. Laid to rest, I allow myself to recite Alfred de Vigny: "Let me sleep the sleep of the Earth", conscious of enriching these marvelous dreams, incited by the ambiguous ferment that breathes in the bosom of these paintings. Back on the green earth of Brentonico (n° 34), my fantasies lose ground as they magically rise in the heavens that I always perceived with fascination when contemplating grandiose maritime horizons.
When Bertille lets me know that she is trying to put life "on pause", I can respond that these stations of contemplation are for me creative steps that shelter me from superficial gesticulations. The artist who dares to say "I am preparing myself through my art for the possibility of not being" offers me the happiness of touching earth by allowing me to land on other shores, between natural pigments and celestial flotation.
Bertille de Baudinière touches reality at its most profound level of being and by, her pictorial force, gives life to this planet, in its original and vegetal greenness.
Bernard Point, 11/2013