"I try to imbue my work with a meditative and contemplative dimension, detached from any intellectualism; I prefer to turn toward the sensations felt. I just do it; it's instinctive."
LOLA MATHÉ
LOLA MATHÉ
visual artist & graphic designer , Paris (75)
Lola transports us into her world and shares her artistic journey with us.
Tell us your story, how did you find your calling?
I have always been handy. As a child, I would keep scraps of paper destined for the bin, collecting them, sometimes to reuse them but most of the time just to accumulate them, out of a love for paper. Following my studies in Applied Arts, I specialized in interior design and decoration until I joined a creative and artistic production agency today. In parallel, I pursue my personal practice, centered around coffee painting and mixed media collage. In December 2022, I applied to and joined Le Cercle de l’Art in order to open my approach more concretely to the artistic field and to embrace this new medium of expression. This new adventure represents for me a first step into exhibiting, exchanging, and meeting others within a community of women artists.
How would you describe your style and artistic approach in a few words?
Flowers are the main source of inspiration for nurturing and creating my collage collection. Observing them allows me to translate the emotion they provide through my artistic work. I begin by tracing their outlines on paper to create refined and emotionally evocative compositions, oscillating between figuration and abstraction. By creating a connection between solids and voids, and through a precise interplay of balance, the volumes articulate themselves and the paper forms symbolize the blooming and movement of these fleeting and ephemeral phenomena. A sense of fragility permeates my work.
My collection of coffee paintings follows a more minimalist approach, based on the idea of repetition: the dot, the line, a color. It is defined by a harmonious use of shapes and lines obtained through the use of coffee as a medium. I like to think of my work as calligraphy, with its method, its measure, its rhythm. In this way, I attempt to instill a meditative and contemplative dimension into my work, detached from any intellectualism; I prefer to turn toward felt sensations. I create, it is instinctive.
What are the themes or subjects that inspire you most in your work?
Generally speaking, I am porous to everything that surrounds me. I believe that absolutely everything is subject matter for creation: what I see, what I hear, everything is a source of inspiration that can give rise to new interpretations. I feed on images, perceptions, and stories. I am passionate about philosophy, science, and poetry: I need that kind of companionship.
Through my "Petals" collage collection, I am interested in the poetic and ephemeral nature of life, the way in which the physical, psychic, or social world manifests itself to the sensibility of a living being, and what we are given to perceive of their connections to the world. The eye perceives, recording colors, lights, and reflections. It becomes a sensor of the world around it, approaching a sensitive beauty in the everyday. My collages are a reflection of imaginary landscapes where shapes and colors articulate and converse with one another.
Between letting go and control, my collection of coffee paintings allows itself to be guided by the path of the brush; it is like a river along which I let myself be carried, following a rhythm—that of the heart. This journey offers a reflection on the connections that exist between every being, every thing. Whether visible or invisible, these connections—these lines—are omnipresent in our daily lives. By playing with different shades and textures arranged systematically, I create a constant variation of poetic and moving minimalist abstractions. I seek to connect, to weave ties and resonances.
In my coffee painting series, my work unfolds through intuitive pieces in which time, gesture, and repetition occupy a prominent place: I question what happens, what repeats itself, what remains, and what fades away.
How do you work?
I work in my studio, based in Paris, in the 10th arrondissement. It is a small but bright and functional space, where I breathe easily and feel at home.
Paper is somewhat the backbone of my work, a central element, a link between the various materials and tools I use. I am committed to using eco-friendly materials, which is why using coffee as a medium perfectly fulfills this desire to take care of the environment as well as myself. Paper, coffee, water, and a few brushes—that's all.
On the other hand, I collect and fill boxes with all sorts of paper, which I then explore and select, with a desire to transform them, to elevate them, to bring new forms out of them. I try to let myself be guided by the colors, reflecting on their presence, on the space they will occupy on the sheet of paper, in search of a balance, a vibration.
Do you have a particular technique, a specific expertise? Without revealing all your secrets, have you developed your own methods and techniques?
Take the example of coffee, which I use as a medium for my illustrations. I didn't invent anything, and yet I am still fascinated and amazed by the creative richness this medium allows: a very rich raw material, full of nuances and textures, which I try to master with every new creation. I enjoy this playful way of working by playing with water and coffee, layering or removing it depending on the desired effects. Its solubility in water also makes it a delicate technique to use.
Sometimes, I let the warm colors of the coffee escape onto the paper, a common thread of a deliberately constructed color harmony. I play with its shades, its density. I find it interesting and fun to work with; coffee offers a wide range of nuances and iridescent reflections depending on its density; it captures and reflects light, it lives on the paper. It is also about giving new life to an everyday material, considering it differently, transforming and sublimating it. Doing experiments, tests, trials, seeing how a coffee stain (re)acts on the paper. It's like an encounter, a conversation between the paper and me. Contrary to any mechanical vision, painting with coffee also means leaving room for irregularity, for a trembling hand. It is letting yourself be surprised by an uncontrolled clumsiness, being astonished by a happy accident, a smudge. And it is all this that animates my works with a soul and sensitive emotion.
Tell us about your daily life, your constraints, your joys, your successes…
I have always felt that I turned my passion into my profession. Without damaging that passion. It is precious and it is a stroke of luck, a luxury, of which I am fully aware and grateful.
I believe that there are preformed elements in our unconscious that lead us toward people and events that are favorable to us. That one must trust in life. I have absolutely no idea what tomorrow will bring, and sometimes that terrifies me. But when I look back on the path I have carved, the one I followed without really knowing, I let myself be carried along. There were key moments, stories, experiences, feelings, narratives, sensations, words, silences, food, beauty, longings, desires, joys, sorrows, fears, dreams, projects. All of this makes me who I am today, and this path is proving to be a rewarding one.
I think it is good to place oneself in a state of openness, a surrender to the encounter, to the circumstance, and the desire to capture what is being said, to experience our emotions, those little windows of the soul that open onto the freedom of expression. When they catch you in your daily life, it becomes a window to escape and a door open to the imagination.
