Our June Artist of the month goes to paper cutter Valentine Louafi whose delicate and complicated figurative works breathe new life into the custom of paper silhouettes.
Valentine Louafi
“I’m a paper minimize artist. I minimize paper, I minimize the world. My blade is my brush. People are my inspiration.”
The place do you make your paper Artwork?
I’m French however at the moment primarily based in the USA, close to New York Metropolis. I don’t have a particular house to create, as I’ve been continuously shifting these previous few years. However I additionally don’t want a whole lot of house to create so I can work in my lounge, bed room, exterior… wherever I really feel like working within the second.
How lengthy have you ever been working with paper?
I began my skilled artwork profession as a paper minimize artist in 2016, with my first exhibition in London. This was the bounce begin of the whole lot. Nonetheless, my love for papercutting started a lot earlier in artwork college in 2007 once I was learning silhouette artwork and shadow theaters.
My Grasp’s thesis was concerning the “Queen of Scissors”—Lotte Reiniger. She is a pioneer in animation movie, and in 1926 produced “The Adventures of Prince Achmed”— the oldest feature-length animated movie. It’s totally made with black silhouette paper puppets that she hand-cut with tiny scissors. I had the possibility to go to the museum devoted to her work in Tubingen, Germany. I began reducing silhouette portraits and puppets afterwards.
How would you describe your strategy to paper artwork?
The photographs I am drawn to are representations of silhouettes. I create my paper cuts by first trying on the empty house. As soon as I start reducing, it is like an ode to minimalism made from pure strains, gentle and shadow diminished to its important. Their delicate sharpness, complicated simplicity, and powerful contrasted nature evoke an limitless sense of depth and which means for me.
The place do you discover inspiration?
Folks…people…I’m fascinated by the human type and wish to spotlight and enlarge its magnificence in all its range.
What are your favourite papers to work with?
I largely use Arches paper—a conventional high-end French model. I take advantage of their 185 gsm tough watercolor paper. This paper is each skinny sufficient and powerful sufficient on the identical time and is my preferrred mixture to chop with ease.
I additionally make my very own papers, composed of any sort that I recycle with additions of leaves, herbs, and flowers I collect from nature walks. A spread of colours are obtained by mixing the pulp with spices, tea or different pure dyes. I would really like my artwork to be the extra sustainable and nil waste doable.
What software might you not reside with out?
My surgical bistouri (scalpel) and surgical blades, which I get instantly from a hospital, given to me by a nurse who can be a collector of my artwork.
What’s the neatest thing about working with paper as a medium?
I reside a minimalist life and I like my artwork to be minimalist too. I wish to assume that you just don’t want a whole lot of sources to create masterpieces.
Magic can come from a single sheet of paper and a blade. I at all times thought that creativity is powered by constraints. With such restricted instruments at your disposal, merely blades and sheets of paper, you want to be extra inventive.
Who’re your favourite paper artists?
What are you engaged on for the time being?
I’m working with two French artwork galleries who promote my artwork in Sedona, Arizona and Saint Germain en Laye, France.
