Emmanuelle Carrad's first collection was inspired by the Greek-Roman culture and the Italian baroque period which forms the basis of the French heritage, mostly relief carvings and sculptures in wood, marble or stone found in churches and bourgeois interiors.
After having been outside of France for thirty years, creating classically-inspired sculptures became a way for the artist to immerse herself into my native culture while both appreciating and reconnecting with her French heritage.
She then built an artist’s retreat in Collobrières, at the heart of the Massif des Maures. There she generated a new collection where the singular forms of stones and trees became intertwined with her classical sculptures. She also developed a collection of nudes in terracotta from live models, and became fascinated by its proportions and the complexity and versatility of the human body. It is thanks to her mother, a talented sculptor, that she has kept her interest in creating busts and faces.
All of her sculptures are first created in clay, then fired. More recently, she has also used modelling wax. Many are then made in bronze in a foundry with which she has worked for years. This allows her to apply high contrast patinas to the same sculpture. She favours patinas imitating antique bronze, gilded wood aged over time, stone and sometimes copper. She emphasizes the importance of surface and form, completely transforming the look of a same sculpture according to the patina.
Recently she experimented with different mediums, away from traditional clay work, and created new ways to express herself. Those new sculptures are simply an expression of her mind and heart, an experiment with shapes and volumes, still loosely based on the human form.
