Artist Painter
Sandrine Blondel
Sandrine Blondel, born in 1964, graduated from ESAG / Met of Penninghen in Paris. After a career as an art director, she has devoted herself entirely to painting for over twenty years, working between her studios in France and Puglia, Italy. Her work revolves around two deliberately contrasting — and non-complementary — pictorial worlds :
- On one hand, there is the mechanical and urban world, raw and vibrant. Vintage engines, pipes, gears, and metal structures are painted on aluminium, a medium that extends the industrial nature of the subject. She explores dynamic perspectives and visual tensions with an energetic, generous, and textured touch. This highly recognisable work has led her to participate in international shows such as Rétromobile, Essen, Goodwood and Pebble Beach, and to be published in Christophorus, the magazine for Porsche enthusiasts.
- In contrast, her more recent series, PUGLIA – Travel Diaries, draws inspiration from the light and Baroque architecture of southern Italy, where she set up a second studio in 2017. Painted on linen canvas, this series floats in an atmosphere of Dolce Vita: the sweetness of life, suspended beauty, simple and luminous moments. It is part of a more contemplative approach, marked by a return to her Italian roots. Landscapes, buildings and details become pretexts for a free, vibrant, almost instinctive figuration.
Whether oil or acrylic, the material is worked with the same high standards of quality and pigment density. Her touch is gestural, raw, yet precise. Seen from a distance, the painting appears realistic; up close, it reveals itself to be made up of bold brushstrokes, sometimes thick, always lively. She is not interested in hyperrealism: what she seeks is a figurative style that is inhabited, tense, full of movement and light.
