Matter of Life

Matter of Life is the story of a six-month residency from French painter, poet and philosopher Eugénie Paultre written and illustrated by the artist and published in a colourfully illustrated paperback book.

In the spring of 2018, Paultre relocated from her studio in Paris to a workshop in the English countryside. Immersed in her practice with line and pigment, this intensive residency allowed the artist to enlarge the scale of her paintings and work on large canvases up to 4 metres tall – an assignment which presented physical as well as philosophical confrontations between the artist and the blank canvas.

A master of colour, Paultre’s abstract works feature carefully selected lines of colour that create beautifully balanced and evocative paintings. Matter of Life showcases a remarkable new series of contemporary paintings and features text written by the artist with ruminations on colour and its language as well as reflections on art, and by that very fact, on matters of life.

Recalling her personal encounters – from her conversations with artist and poet Etel Adnan and notes from the poetic works of Stéphane Mallarmé and Charles Baudelaire to observing antagonisms of the modern world and moments of clarity in view of natural landscapes – Paultre shows a profound connection to the world around her and, in this book, considers what it means to make something of life and to do something worthwhile.