Through her paintings, Marie Schem intends to study the look.

As a teenager, I was very impressed with the look others turned on me, looks that tried to put a label on. These thoughts are translated into dark stares in her paintings, thinking and looking being so closely intertwined…on the other hand, colors express emotions, along with faces switching from one state of mind to another.

Thus come the faces, one after another, set next to paintings of flowers or fruits, one or many of them on the canvas, looking distant, detached from this world, their emotions showing on the surface in flat strokes of violet, green, pink and yellow. Influenced by her dual culture – the artist has constantly been living between France and Algeria – Marie Schem gives shape to her many questions.

Stemming from two lineages where origins collide into identities, she is a dreamer, a happy-go-lucky spirit, cheerful person, whom life has forced into early seriousness. She has grown up between several countries, has come upon the Beaux-Arts, lived and blossomed there for four years. There she has searched for harmony, created icons and become a fabulous naive master painter.

She lives altogether through superb portraits, each time singular or kindly repeated, in closed eyes, through prevented looks, in the violence of deliciously contrasted shades.