BARTLET Françoise, textile art

Biography

Françoise Bartlet was born in 1955. Self-taught artist, she developed from the 80's an original textile art practice which consists in embroidering on the weft of a burlap canvas colored cotton threads in order to materialize the play of tangle of forms of a preliminary drawing. Small objects or pearls, enrich the relief of these embroideries where the choice of bright colors and simple and graphic forms transform into universal signs elements often autobiographical. Thus childhood crosses the approached themes: presence of a broken gemellity, nostalgia of happy periods as a child or as a mother, recurring rainbows which illuminate the geometrical landscapes of the inhabited cities. 

Recently the artist has chosen to divert traffic signs with this same technique. If it is a question of restoring a little beauty and humor to an omnipresent signage, this series can be seen as a restless exploration of the stages of a life full of dangers. 

Parallel to her textile practice, Françoise Bartlet makes on themes close to the series of drawings in ink, watercolor or gouache on paper supports of small formats that she sometimes gathers in large compositions. Without ever being preparatory sketches for her "tapestries" (with a few exceptions), her paintings are presented as combinations of a set of forms that constitute her personal pantheon, to which are added over time images borrowed from current events or travels. 

Artistic approach

My works are stretched on a quality frame, consisting of a wooden plate held by cleats that ensure rigidity and thickness. The back is covered with a grey cardboard plate and houses the hanging system. For some pieces, either I put a surrounding rod, painted in a color appropriate to the work, or I deliberately left the burlap canvas visible on the thickness of the frame. This arrangement suits the way I would like these works to be seen, i.e. as textile paintings, somewhat in the spirit of Sophie Taeuber-Arp's woollen embroideries. The absence of protective glass (at first) should make it possible to appreciate the tactile dimension of the relief of the cotton threads as well as the diversity of the stitches or the play with the sewn beads, for example.