Featured Artist Zabé

French artist Elisabeth Marette, also known as Zabé, uses paper and mixed media to create colorfully expressive portraits. Visit her website to view more of her portfolio.

 

 

My name is Elisabeth but everyone calls me Zabé. It is the name I gave myself when I was four and couldn’t pronounce my first name properly. Quite naturally, this is the name I chose to sign my artworks.

 

 

I was born and raised in France, in an environment where my creativity has always found room to express itself. From an early age, I developed a taste for drawing and a strong attraction for all kinds and types of papers. One of my earliest memories is from when I collected discarded wallpaper samples and created little boxes that I shared with friends and family. Later, I incorporated this love of paper into my art. Everything happens for a reason!

 

 

Painting and drawing have always been a part of my life; however, it is only when I moved with my family from Paris to Los Angeles in 2019 that I let the artist in me blossom. I finally feel I have found what makes me truly happy, and every day I feel lucky to create and share my work with others.

 

 

Bringing faces to life through my art is what inspires me the most, whether they are feminine or masculine, famous or anonymous, pretty or ungrateful.

 

 

I am fascinated by human expressions and eyes in particular—the way fleeting emotions are communicated through a look, an attitude, a crease at the corner of the mouth, a burst of laughter or a furrowed eyebrow.

 

 

These endless expressions open a door into “otherness” and allow a story to be told about one’s personality, mood, character and energy. By making them exist, the ephemeral becomes permanent and allows us to establish a connection with others; a sometimes inexplicable, but real emotion that reminds us of our own humanity.

 

 

Over the years, I have developed my skills using pencil, oil paint, pastel, charcoal, acrylic and watercolor. But no matter the medium, I always return to black and white. Black sets the limits while white illuminates, and in the space between lies the possibility to reveal another world where new colors, shapes and patterns subtly intertwine to reveal themselves and express emotions.

 

 

My work is often prompted by a desire for colors that to me seem to correspond to a particular mood.

 

 

My first step is to choose the paint and papers that best express what I feel. I work with different types of papers and play with transparencies to create new tones, shapes, patterns and textures. I assemble, glue, mix and then superimpose the papers more or less randomly on the canvas until I obtain the right balance. This unique background will fill in the negative space and also the intermediate tones of my portraits.

 

 

The second step is when I make the faces come to life with black and white paint, which either hides or reveals background and offers the observer a multitude of details to discover, born from the marriage of paint and paper.

Thank you for engaging with my work, and I wish you great discovery!

 

Artist Zabé invites you to follow her on Instagram and Facebook.

 

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