| A new breed of painting and photography, French artist Marie Péjouan’s work invites viewers to a world full of vibrant colors and mysterious visages. Péjouan gracefully incorporates picturesque elements into the photographs she takes—photographs that stand for a reality observed through her lens. The result is a representation that is dreamy, capricious, and out of this world. Péjouan’s “dreamscapes” are endearing and mesmerizing, and emerge out of a place where fantasy and reality intersect. “The more I work,” Péjouan said, “the more the border between painting and photography is vanishing.” Her inspiration, she said, comes from her journeys, each like a story, each a testimony of her observation and of the feelings evoked by the scenery or characters she comes across. | 
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Catherine Y. Hsieh
Courtesy of the artist.
A new breed of painting and photography, French artist Marie Péjouan’s work invites viewers to a world full of vibrant colors and mysterious visages. Péjouan gracefully incorporates picturesque elements into the photographs she takes—photographs that stand for a reality observed through her lens. The result is a representation that is dreamy, capricious, and out of this world. Péjouan’s “dreamscapes” are endearing and mesmerizing, and emerge out of a place where fantasy and reality intersect. “The more I work,” Péjouan said, “the more the border between painting and photography is vanishing.” Her inspiration, she said, comes from her journeys, each like a story, each a testimony of her observation and of the feelings evoked by the scenery or characters she comes across. “In the same way a writer builds his story, borrowing from his experience, memory and his own life, I build my photo,” Péjouan notes.
Péjouan’s work is reminiscent of bits and pieces of memories that are hazy yet clear, bizarre yet familiar. The imagery is personal and objective at the same time, rendering viewers ready to relate to what they see. It is, however, not her intention “to impose my idea of the world [on people,] but to satisfy my ambition to create an ideal world from my memories, as we can do it sometimes in our dreams,” Péjouan said. “That’s why my creations are often so peaceful and dream-like. And like dreams, they are the fruits of a mental reconstruction.” Reconstructed in each frame are Péjouan’s utopian ideas of how idyllic the world should be, expressed through digital photography. The meticulous details of her subjects materialize in a painterly halo that seems surreal yet earthly.
Whether it’s the sea, a pasture, a carnival in Rio, a market in Jaipur, or thousands of dazzling golden pagodas, Péjouan manages to encapsulate a moment that is vivid and moving. The multitude of her subjects is overwhelming, the richness of her palettes astounding, owing to her ability to segue between two media—painting and photography. Série Toscane first impresses viewers as oil on canvas, but turns out to be digital photography, with an endless meadow flourishingly green and daisies boomingly yellow. In other works, layers of fuchsia, purple, blue, red, and gold, deep and light, transport viewers to a dimension that seems far yet near, where they are closest to nature, with their bare eyes and hearts. “Color is an essential aspect of my work, both as a brute material and as a privileged means of expression of my research,” Péjouan said. “The importance of compositional structure, of movement, and of the permanent interaction of colors, is the thread linking all my works together.” Indeed, color is a signature of Péjouan’s work. So is each imaginary representation of her dreamscapes, where she montages memories and feelings, interlacing whim with actuality.
