Céline Guichard is a visual artist from Angoulême in south-western France, who has become increasingly well known for her strange, surreal, fantastic and grotesque images inspired by her obsessions with human biology, dreams, nature and transgression. Until the end of the 1990s she mainly practised painting, but since around 2000 she has immersed herself in drawing and web-art, increasingly using computer tools to enhance and develop her work.

As she explains, ‘I spent my childhood in the countryside, living in a sort of constant joy, in strong communion with nature and animals. I thought I had a special power – the power of understanding and talking with animals, trees and streams. At my maternal grandmother’s house there was a Hans Christian Andersen story book illustrated by Jiří Trnka – his drawings really impressed and inspired me. Those years, between the ages of five and twelve, are the basis of my inspiration. I often write down my dreams, and use them as a starting point for my work – the stories we create in our sleep make for great artistic material. My images often arise from a first step of simple drawing, with a pen or felt-tip pen on white paper. I rarely draw from nature. I have in my head a bank of images and shapes that I transcribe in a distorted way and it is precisely this transcription, these distortions, that interest me. I like asymmetry and imbalance, monstrosity, the grotesque.’

As well as exhibiting in several French galleries, including Paris and Marseilles, her work has also been shown in Italy. She has contributed to more than twenty art publications with publishers like De l’Amour, Le Dernier Cri, Feutre, Sylviane, and Crocuta Crocuta, and regularly collaborates with printmakers, screenprinters, poets and writers.

Céline Guichard’s website can be found here.

We are very grateful to our Russian friend Yuri for suggesting the inclusion of this artist, and for supplying most of the images.