Inès Le Cannellier

Painting?, 2019

video and soundscape

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Painting? is a video juxtaposing the creative process of painting and drawing using both traditional media - paint and graphite - and non traditional media, in this case, food. My intent is to bring to light the artistic qualities of food by playing into the multisensory experience of art making. I aim to elevate food and cooking to the status of an artform and to show the similarities across these disciplines. Despite their inherent differences, they are all governed by similar concepts - textures, colors, shapes, composition.

The video incorporates cooking and painting sounds with visuals of “fine art” and food plating to emphasize where these dynamics converge - or in some cases, contrast. These varying disciplines can co-exist, and in fact exist within the same creative bubble. By layering sounds such as a brush gliding over a canvas over visuals of plating food, I am also encouraging the viewer to question their pre-conceived notions of what art is and what it is associated to. What happens when you intersect food with art? What happens when you don't see or hear what you expect? Can food be art? What constitutes art? How do the two disciplines relate? How do they speak to each other?

The format of the project came from a video of Heather Day showcasing her creative process. She is an artist I admire for her vibrant, enthralling, and expressive pieces. She works on paper and canvas with acrylic, pencil, and pastels.

This piece was published in the first issue of Mulberry Literary, a multidisciplinary literary publication dedicated to featured works from a range of artists, writers, and intellectuals.

Inspiration 

• Heather Day, an abstract visual artist who's work I discovered on Instagram. I am inspired by her bold expressive lines and compositions as well as the techniques she employs to apply the material onto the support. For this project, I am taking inspiration from this video (Links to an external site.) on her website where she shows us a glimpse into her creative process.

• Chef's Table series on Netflix, specifically the episode about Grant Achatz, founder of Alinea (Links to an external site.) restaurant group in Chicago for the food plating and the way he elevates food by treating it as something almost precious.