Through painting, photography and ceramics, Cécile Vernant explores an intimate territory: the Martinique of her childhood. Born in Paris, but arriving on the island at 18 months, the artist claims a deep-rootedness, nourished by smells, lights, textures and sensory memories. In Cécile Vernant’s work, humor mingles with sensitivity, play with accidents, technique with instinct. An encounter with a creator who traces her path with a rare sincerity, outside the rigid confines of contemporary art.
A carnal memory of Martinique
For Cécile Vernant, art is above all a way of feeling, living and connecting with oneself and one’s island.
From her childhood drawings on a lilac wall to her recent works combining clay, pastel and oil, she composes a universe where each medium becomes a vector of emotions.
“I work by ricochet”, she says, claiming an instinctive approach, where each creation inspires another in a logic of visual exquisite cadaver. visual exquisite cadaver ((a spontaneous sequence of works, like a visual dialogue).
Martinique runs through Cécile Vernant’s work, not as a fixed setting, but as an inner landscape.
Nature, school memories, the sound of rain on sheet metal, the cliffs of Bellefontaine, tree frogs at dawn… everything is creative material.
“The land of the heart is the land of happy childhood,” she asserts.
And it’s this childhood, rooted in collective play, tactile sensations and natural forms, that she delicately conveys.
Ruins of silver light
This black-and-white photograph, printed as a final edition on silver paper, conveys a deeply contemplative view of Martinique. Thanks to the metal support, the light seems to emerge from the image itself, accentuating the interplay of shadow and matter. Through the ruins, the light and the shadows, Cécile Vernant captures what the island abandons, but also what it transforms. Far from the picturesque, she reveals an architectural memory in mutation, a beauty that resists.
Ruines aux lumières d’argent echoes her work in painting and ceramics: the same search for grain, the same sensitivity to material. It is in the interstices, the traces, the silences that the artist inscribes her emotion. “Nature here is the most beautiful painting I know,” she says.
Multimedia, multi-sensitivity
Ceramics, pastels, photography, oils… For Cécile Vernant, each medium offers a new gateway into the intimate. Her multi-media approach gives her the freedom to express herself in many ways, each material becoming a sensitive avenue of exploration and, above all, a means of creating a dialogue between materials.
Full Moon Tales - 48 bis
This painting belongs to an open, sensitive and poetic series. With Visit Contes de la pleine lune, Cécile Vernant constructs an emotional universe from childhood memories, nocturnal sensations and fragments of imaginary architecture or abandoned armatures. Gentle abstraction meets symbolism: the full moon becomes a marker, an inner light that guides the brush. Untitled N° 48 bis embodies this intimate language of suspended forms, dreamlike lines and subtle colors. “I never work on just one piece at a time. Each canvas speaks to the next”, explains the artist, who claims a fluid, free, instinctive approach.
Her relationship with materials is also deeply sensory: she often works with her fingers, letting textures guide her emotions. Clay, in particular, soothes her physically and mentally. “It’s as if clay massaged your heart and soul,” she confides. Her quirky sense of humour, present even in the titles of her pieces ( Pineapple Tête Couchal, Bananas megzoclettes …), brings a salutary lightness to an often too serious art world.
Pineapple Tête Couchal
Born of a creative accident, this clay sculpture embodies Cécile Vernant’s instinctive approach. Initially conceived as an upright headdress, the piece collapsed. Rather than seeing this as a failure, the artist drew creative strength from it, humorously christening the work Ananas Tête Couchal. The gesture is revealing: in his practice, nothing is set in stone; everything can be hijacked, renamed and replayed.
“Humor is part of my work,” she says. This piece reflects her attachment to materials and the manual gesture, but also to a free and joyful Caribbean aesthetic.
Creating without over-intellectualizing
Cécile Vernant rejects the elitist codes of contemporary art. She creates above all to give pleasure and let the viewer do his or her own internal cooking with the untitled works.
“You can take things seriously without taking yourself too seriously,” she repeats. This lucid, free-spirited stance appeals to a varied audience, from enlightened amateurs curious about the island to professionals in search of authentic voices. Her attachment to Martinique is also a logistical and emotional choice: the climate, the materials, the people… everything nourishes her creativity.
But she lives in Paris, forced by the realities of the market. Here she finds another source of inspiration: lack. “When I’m missing Martinique, that’s when I’m most creative,” she says. Deep down, she draws her strength from the back-and-forth between here and elsewhere, between tangible matter and intimate memories.
Gallery
The works feed off each other. For example, his concept of mutant print – a free variation on an existing work – illustrates the porous relationship between forms and ideas.
Madison's Garden
Technique: Mutant print from paint Untitled 34 bis – 2025
A sensitive variation on Untitled 34 bis, this work illustrates transformation as a process. The artist replays her emotions with other colors and textures, in a game of free reinterpretation.
Untitled N°45
Technique: Painting on canvas
Modified the day before the opening, this piece embodies the ongoing dialogue between doubt and intuition. A striking work for this exhibition.
Pineapple Foufou
Technique: Clay sculpture
A generous, mischievous form, this sculpture evokes plants, carnival and the joy of creation. A piece that reclaims humor in contemporary art.
Load
Technique: Clay mural
“Charge” says it all: physical, mental, emotional. This mural is rooted in the weight of the material as much as in the lightness of its form.
A fisherman's paradise
Technique: Photography
A landscape captured in a rare moment of light. This photo captures the artist’s intimate bond with his island, between abandonment and visual enchantment.
An artist to watch
Cécile Vernant’s bold, sincere approach has established her as a singular voice on the Martinique and Caribbean art scene. Her aim is not to change the world through art, but to sow the seeds of the right emotions, to rehabilitate the sensitive in all its richness. For creative Caribbean artists, cultural players and all those who take the Caribbean to heart, her career is an invitation to explore, to feel and to create without fear.
“Art can’t save the world. But it can do some good.” Cécile Vernant
The exhibition will run until the end of January.
FAQ
Cécile Vernant is a multimedia artist who was born in Paris and moved to Martinique as a child. Painting, photography and ceramics are the pillars of her work, nourished by a deep sensory memory of the island. Her work explores emotions, materials and memories, far from the rigid codes of contemporary art.
Cécile Vernant works in paint, silver-based photography, pastel, oil and ceramics. For her, each medium becomes a complementary language, enabling a dialogue between textures, forms and sensations. This multi-media approach reflects an instinctive, deeply sensory quest.
Martinique runs through Cécile Vernant’s work like an inner landscape. Sounds, lights, ruins, nature and childhood memories nourish her creations. The island is never an illustrative backdrop, but an emotional material that shapes her relationship with gesture, matter and memory.
