A new art show explores the fields of vision of the visually impaired

April 26, 2017 - 'Crossing/La traversee' part of A Different View exhibition currently on show at Sofitel JBR. Courtesy Myriam Schryve

Myriam Schryve, 36, is a painter who splits her time between France and the UAE. She currently has an exhibition at Plantation, Sofitel JBR in Dubai that explores the way visually impaired people see and their emotions. Here, The Art Blog caught up with her for a Q&A:

I was lucky to grow in a family where passion was been encouraged. My grandpa sculpted, my dad was a painter and I started to draw from a young age. As a child, drawing was a way to extend my dreams. While growing, I start practicing painting as a way of expression. Today, it is my life. I am working very hard and painting sets the pace of my everyday life.

I have always liked things shattered, provoked, or tainted by melancholy. I have the same feeling for the people I decided to follow and represent in my paintings. I am interested in people with mishap, extravagant character and with a life out of the ordinary.

Listening to 70’ punk rock spirit music, the likes of Lou Reed, Patti Smith, and the major French composers such as Jacques Brel or Gainsbourg are also source of inspiration. In another way, Bach, poetry, Bacon’s harrowing paintings, Basquiat, or Soulages’s artworks are the main drivers that inspires me

This is a series of paintings that bear the witness to the complex situations of the visually impaired. Each painting represents a real person and it gives form to their visual fields and their inner energy and emotions in order to understand them and their situation without any statement, judgment or dramatisation. That is why the title is “A Different View”. I am interested in painting the brutal collision of opposite feelings in life. It is a way to translate the process of going from mourning to hardship to being born to life again. Lust for life and hope are at the centre of my artwork.

Firstly, painting was a release for me so my artwork was very personal. I only recently decided to show my artwork, when it had evolved. The first time I decided to exhibit in an art show was in World Art Dubai in 2016. It was a challenging experience because it was the first time that I had to show my artwork to a larger number of people. But I strongly believe that confronting the opinion of others is a way to enrich our own thinking, and a way to progress. I had nice encounters with visitors and other artists and I was very glad that all my paintings found new owners.

Since then, I have showed my work with an online gallery in America and l was part of a contemporary art exhibition at Palazzo Flangini in Venice as well as at Art Capital Paris at Grand Palais (Feb 2017). Later this year, my work will show at the Florence Biennale.

My current web site is www.ateliermpaintings.comI have recently joined Facebook, and you can see a part of my artwork on https://m.facebook.com/ateliermpaintings/

* A Different View runs until May 14 at Plantation, Sofitel JBR.