Louise Janet

To look at one of Louise Janet’s canvases is to be invited into the intimacy of a bedroom, whose untidy charm is reminiscent of our everyday lives. Graduating from the Beaux-Arts de Paris in 2023, the young painter began her career in François Boiron’s studio, before joining James Rielly’s for her final two years of study.

Fascinated by 17th-century Flemish painting, and more specifically by the way Vermeer painted his “windows open to the world” – giving his interiors depth and his figures an irrepressible presence – Louise turned to figurative painting from the outset.

In her small-scale works, Louise Janet reveals parts of her own history. Reflective characters move about in her familiar interiors: far from wishing to portray her entourage, the artist nonetheless lets us glimpse a part of their interiority. The way a room is decorated, the casual way a comforter is left untucked on a bed, the “organized mess” strewn across the floor… Each object becomes a clue to a personality, opening the way to narrative.

Oil painting enables Louise Janet to immortalize certain moments that she would like to suspend in time. The artist integrates a whole imaginary world into her photographic memory, substituting her perception of reality for the gaps in memories.