Micheline Roquebrune Connery’s art is filled with le bonheur de vivre. Her vibrant, realist style, which she has developed since the age of 23, is well suited to recording her varied impressions of family and friends, city streets and vacation hideaways, leisure activities and serene moments of contemplation. Her paintings have a directness and informality that seems to parallel the way she lives her life. In the texture of her days and the empathetic response to her subjects, she reveals her true talent.
Intense and absorbing, many of her best paintings depend on friendship and a sense of familiarity with her subject. Often her figures sit quietly, watching and waiting. They enjoy what is going on around them yet stand apart from it all. From their expressions, they also understand that they are being closely observed, even lovingly scrutinized, by someone who knows them very well. Involved in private thoughts, patient perusals, intimate dreams, Connery’s subjects reflect an aura of pleasurable dignity and ease of heart.
Using simplified forms, unexpected croppings and changes of scale, the artist draws the viewer right into the action of her paintings. Highly personal, her use of color harmonies and contrasts supports this vision, as light emanates from the middle of each scene, sometimes cool and sharp, other times warm, luxuriant and supple. As Princess Ezra Jah described in a recent letter, much depends on the place, the ambiance, and the moment.
Painting first and foremost for herself but with a deep responsiveness to others, Micheline Roquebrune Connery has developed an approach to her art that is perhaps best characterized as one of luxe, calme et volupte.
Artist profile courtesy of
Susan Fisher Sterling
Chief Curator
The National Museum of Women in the Arts Washington, DC
http://www.nmwa.org
Roquebrune Connery is a cultural dynamo who enjoys a diversity of artistic interest. From producing plays, including her recent Broadway hit, “Art”, to writing and painting, in her work as in her life, she is endlessly fascinated by relations between people. “That is why I like to paint people rather than landscapes. People are more interesting.” Yet, for all her emotional energy and bravado, her paintings are surprisingly quiescent and revealing.
Tony Award winning play, “Art” by Yasmina Reza, traces the relationship between three men whose friendship is sorely tested when one of them buys a piece of contemporary art. Originally, performed in French, the rights to the production in the UK were secured by Sean Connery when Micheline saw the production.