"From the green room" - Poems - 2007

Poems translated in english homeprinted on cotton rag paper and hand sewn.

3 women - Emily Dickinson, Virginia Woolf, Hélène Schjerfbeck - are crossing the big city of The Hague

"Je tombai" - Artist book - 2007

Text and drawings from Caty Lévêque: 36 numerical printings and original cover.

The diary

A private diary. Private or public? A combination of circumstances...
Winter 2001. I return to my studio after an exhibition. It is cold outside, inside. Hard to go back to painting. This contrast between art and village life… I must find a way to reconcile the two; to justify my place in this rural environment, this daily routine where I live. Here art is a luxury, a foreign thing, an incomprehensible object, almost useless. Unconsciously, I find the answer in my first drawing. I will draw the “here” and “now”, not only of my life but of Life. I am going to cast off the moorings, sound off; question daily life, to squeeze out of it a juice that could be called Art.
What began as a life belt grows like a revelation. This is what I have beenI looking for, this bond of the “down to earth”, the concrete and poetry. It is a personal voyage of rediscovering the meaning of Art. its function as a footbridge. Now I can see, I can hear, I can feel . Suddenly, everything deserves attention, everything has a new beginning, everything can be transcribed, translated, and thus transcended.
Daily life becomes universal, “mythological”. “C.”, our greengrocer, the figs, the plane tree, Mrs L., Mr B.; all echo to something else, to a wider more complicated story, to humanity...

The first 45 drawings became my first book. I am still writing the sequel. Since 2006, it has become a dutch diary.

Books Covers - Editions Gaïa