Brigitte Aubignac belongs to the circle of painters perfectly identifiable by the only fact that it contains only rare representatives relevant to the challenge of painting. This is the ambition of Brigitte Aubignac, «painting» against all trends, against all fashions with the sole purpose of wanting to trace the current fragments of a history that goes back to the most distant times of man. 

 

This tradition of painting was the basis for the development of her work, which she accomplished through a work of meditation and in-depth knowledge of the ancient masters to whom she refers in her first research entirely devoted to the theme of Mary Magdalene. What animates it is first the taste of the paint, its flavor could almost be said. Brigitte Aubignac through her different cycles of the Madeleine joins the work of primitive artists, reborn or baroque, seeking the traits of a humanity that more than any other symbolizes the Madeleine. Brigitte Aubignac willingly quotes Andre del Sarto, Titian, Rubens, and Roger Van der Weyden. All have represented this emblematic figure, often in the guise of very real people. Madeleine symbolizes the woman, not idealized for her qualities and the defects that are given to her, she is a trace of humanity in often idealized religious representations. It is part of the obscure and the carnal being to which the painters of that time are attached in a meticulous representation that studies Brigitte Aubignac: «In the group representations, in the presence of other protagonists of the Passion of Christ such as the Piétas or the Mises au tombeau, Descentes de Croix, I discovered another Madeleine, more human, more visceral, the one that became for me «the favorite of painters», because it is omnipresent, its silhouette, its face spring from the composition, its face is never as innocuous or idealized as can be that of the Virgin. It’s a portrait...”

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It was in 1990, during a trip to Florence, that Brigitte Aubignac stopped in front of a representation of Mary Magdalene by Donatello, the woman is emaciated, with a maidenness that leaves no sign of femininity. This very strong image of a painful woman strikes the young artist who makes her the central character of his work in a constant and even stubborn way from 1990 to 2002. Three cycles retrace the real and imaginary life of this character filled with humanity, contradiction, and compassion. The first cycle consisting of 12 paintings illustrates a day of solitude of Marie-Madeleine in her cave where she retired for thirty years. It is called “Marie-Madeleine, l’Abri tranquille”. This imaginary or real cave, where Madeleine would have made her retreat, which is someplace near Sainte Baume in Provence, serves as a pretext for a series of paintings in which the artist describes in detail, the life of the Saint in her small activities of the day. Peace contrasts with the magnitude of renunciation and the series ends on a portrait of realism imbued with nostalgia.

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This first cycle is followed by a second part «Au Sanctuaire», a text and 16 paintings on the visit of a sanctuary dedicated to Marie-Madeleine. The artist worked there from 1997 to 2000. The life of pilgrims animates the place. Offerings, songs, the merchant of light, the guardian of the temple, sacred rites...
These are all those tiny and major events that the artist depicts in a palette of shades of gray-blue and dominant brown tones crossed by a bright yellow line. The light is diffuse and sometimes festive atmosphere. The artist seems to be interested in fervor, but also in anecdotes of events and the desire for a faithful representation of scenes from ordinary life.

Brigitte Aubignac draws here the style that marks her creation. A patient searching for truth through an «invented» interpretation, thus proposes an interpreted image of the real. The interpretation is done through her filter of solitude in which the artist has locked herself to reach at best the truth of the feelings that she seeks to reproduce on the canvas. She thus depicts her reality reduced to the elements that surround her, which then become the subject of the painting.

 

Little by little his universe expands, and in the next cycle "Après les Larmes", the third part of the series dedicated to Marie-Madeleine, 15 diptychs, always small formats, come alive with a new breath, like a return to light and a right to life. After confinement and repentance, the traces of a possible emerge and the events of a life that opens up to nature are outlined. Portraits are doubled by landscapes, the light is brighter, and life becomes more frivolous. This series of paintings executed between 2001 and 2002 appears as the culmination of a quest where painting comes out of the shadows, and where meditation offers to see the fruits of its slow maturation.

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From then on, Brigitte Aubignac set out to paint a living reality, anecdotal, borrowed by emotions, whose intensity she seeks to capture in a series of «portraits» that she calls «Portraits anonymes». She seems to delight in inventing a gallery of characters, none of which has real existence but all of which represent the archetype of a model frequently encountered. “Le Tricot”, “Le Sac”, “L’Ado”, “Le Soutien”, “Go”, she names them by their distinctive sign, and their faces suggest those we might meet on the street, on a beach, or in the shared intimacy of complicit moments. This gallery consists of twenty small formats (25.5 x 26.5 cm) executed in a perfectly classical and mastered oil technique, developed during his slow meditation during the Madeleine cycle. However, they restore a very current vivacity, full of warmth and humor, which the artist had voluntarily abandoned in her previous work, in which she also sought a pictorial ideal that was concerned with reproducing a secular painting.

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Since the «Portraits Anonymes», which she executed between 2003 and 2005, the time of conception of the work has accelerated, meditation gives way to the pleasure of painting and the invention of new figures that accompany the unfolding of a story. The artist tells her story and the story of daily life that she writes in this series of small paintings, precious in their execution, but also ironic, cheerful, thoughtful, and full of anecdotes and details that make them alive with a very personal reality. These portraits draw the meeting of the real and the imaginary, through figures that almost resemble us, but also have no fleshly existence. It is in this that the artist invents his story: one could write, as in the movie credits «This has no relation with real facts and any resemblance to existing people is fortuitous»... We have some doubts, however, because Brigitte Aubignac feeds her work of impressions, sensations, feelings collected from life itself, and it is in this that these portraits challenge; the work is concerned with the staging of a real experience that constitutes its true foundation. For Brigitte Aubignac, painting is alive and resolves itself in its confrontation with the real through the search for a balance and a certain pictorial ideal.

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​The artist continued the exercise between 2005 and 2006, by performing another series of works that she calls «Les Garçons», probably inspired by the presence of her teenage son in a daily confrontation. Brigitte Aubignac invents a meeting of young men, who can also reach a certain maturity. The inspiration of this series seems more intimate, and implies a more complete staging. The face, the body, the attitude, and the decor build these works, always of reduced formats, pretexts to variations on a personal theme but also terribly universal. Each painting is precise and draws a world occupied, in part central, by the living character of an existence strongly rooted in our time. The artist works with the detail of bodies, clothes, and environment that root the work in a story that can be dated. It is a period portrait that Brigitte Aubignac sketches through this series of paintings, illustrating human models surrounded by the significant elements of current existence. She works with perspectives, and sets up her subject in a framework built according to classical canons - no disruption of perspectives, no questioning of forms - The work of Brigitte Aubignac imposes itself in the rigor of its constructed landmarks; his originality is based on his ability to create within these constraints a truly personal work that emits an atmosphere marked by an objective reality, but always the object of interpretation. Each character lives from his own existence, the artist defines it precisely through an action, an attitude, instant image that represents both a human archetype and also reflection of the world.