“Véronique Cauchefer is a painter invested in the spirit of her time; accordingly, she declares her contemporariness loud and clear. Contemporary art, in the words of the American critic and philosopher, Arthur Danto, has exploded the notion of concept, and correspondingly, art has become philosophy. To its merit, openness to formal plurality will have nevertheless permitted the adherents of colour to capitalise on what their fathers, the modernists, had established. It is in the light of this very movement that we should approach the work of Véronique Cauchefer. As such, she is passionate about artists such as Corneille of the Cobra group, or David Hockney, one of the predominant figures of Pop Art, who have known by the power of their colour- play how to rehabilitate the notion of pure pleasure, which permits the viewer to say that an œuvre is beautiful because it delights them.
When very young, she developed a clear affinity for colouring, colouring in religious images. Coming from a background that permitted her the means to pursue her aspirations, Véronique was immersed in an artistic universe from her childhood, whetting her appetite for the beautiful. Since then she has not ceased to oscillate between periods preoccupied by the profane life, sufficiently so to preclude all creativity, and other, more fertile periods. Her first periods belong to an incubation where she first practised painting on wood, having received a box of oils as a gift. Taking painting lessons, she next took up the genres of portraiture and landscape, demonstrating a sure mastery of mimesis. After studying at the Beaux-Arts school in Paris she undertook to make a clean, resolute break with the preceding style to give free rein to a creativity as much original as it was prolific. In this way, her imagination could reconnect with the little girl already sensitive to the ambiances of interiors as her mother kept an interior design shop, which would come to reinforce her passion for art and decoration magazines, of which she was a regular, avid reader.
This new period expressed itself in a succession of paintings of interiors, each displaying its own predominant tone. No provocation here, but a progressive immersion of our regard in the dream-universe of the artist. Form only serves to set the decor; from a formal point of view, the scene varies little; first a succession of salons, rooms, alcoves, hangings, tapestries, or richly decorated ceilings of which the patterns emanate from the treatment of colours – launched at the canvas in a creative impulsion – which frame more contemporary art deco furnishings. In subverting the code of colours, the artist intrigues as much as she enthrals us. It’s almost a production line of works that displays itself here, where a dazzling chromatic plurality brightens up the predominant monochromy of each execution, conveying a desire to psychically exhaust all the possibilities of colour. It is colour, indeed, which impresses upon us the ambiance of each painting, inviting us to savour, for the duration of a look, a universe where ‘everything is only order, beauty, luxury, calm and delight.’ Our imagination, queen of our faculties, leads us to an elsewhere, an alterity that each of us will be able to identify in accordance with our own associations but which indubitably is encircled by a tonality which we find equally in Matissean motifs and in the Portuguese azulejos, or even in the luxurious interiors of the hôtels particuliers of the 19th century – that very tonality which Baudelaire
evoked in his ‘l’Invitation au voyage’. Nonetheless this dream-journey delights us, particularly as these interiors are all enlivened by a luxuriant vegetation which in the end dominates a second series dedicated to exteriors; for Véronique, vegetation and water are the very essence of the living, but this incursion into tropical exuberance comes with the rekindling of the emotional tumult which accompanies every rite of passage, this duality which art never ceases reminding us of, that beyond the visible are unleashed the chthonic forces of the invisible. With the marvelling which the first look arouses, it’s truly an anxiety before the unknown which rises to the surface, and the forms which stand out more frankly from the background of the canvas, confer, by their stasis, the impression of imminent cataclysm.
Little by little the richly worked decors make way for zones of uniform colour stripped of any embellishment. On the inanimate space, bodies of young girls, often pubescent, graft themselves, always accompanied by animals issuing from a bestiary which is limited but full of symbolism. If the bird is indubitably a nod to Corneille, it also reminds us of the symbolic force of the feminine, omnipresent in the works of this artist. As for the snake, its surreptitious presence ensures the correct unfurling of life and therefore of the œuvre. Over time the style evolves, the colours become more acid, following the example of David Hockney, and an imperfect perspective reminds us that we are still in the presence of an elsewhere, even if this one becomes more prosaic, marked in the course of the works, by the incongruous presence of a camera, a computer, a telephone, or even a television set.
Today, the artist seems to embrace the problematics dear to the Narrative Figuration movement. If the enchantment excited by the colour-play is still complete, the regard is more interested in narrative, of which the plot is elaborated through elements that seem heterogeneous at first sight, but the copresence of which constructs the story, in this way responding to the conundrum posed by the depiction of the temporal dimension with the picture’s static representation. In this way, the artist offers varied and numerous scenes of daily life, some more playful than others, enhanced by a touch of humour conveyed in the titles. Still others evoke the states of a woman’s soul or a couple’s latent conflicts.
A new style, confirmed by the adoption of a new signature ‘V’Cau’, a new universe, more prosaic certainly, but just as fascinating; these new executions are so many variations of the artist’s journey; for her, creativity is a matter of spontaneity, and if the Platonic Idea prevails, it’s indeed the principle of finality-without-end which creates the œuvre without the artist’s awareness, to the extent that she is always surprised by the results, as though she discovered an alterity there which she had not suspected before. Whatever convolutions will follow in the work of Veronique Cauchefer we may be sure that she will remain faithful to the authenticity of her pictorial craft, for that is where the mark of her talent resides!”

“L’œuvre de Véronique Cauchefer est jubilatoire par sa palette luxuriante et sa liberté de composition. L’artiste peint depuis toujours, avec cette impérative nécessité de s’exprimer. Elle suit des cours aux Beaux-Arts de Paris qui vont perfectionner sa technique sans toutefois altérer la spontanéité juvénile de son inspiration.
Véronique Cauchefer sait saisir l’atmosphère d’un intérieur, une ambiance intime, la tranquillité silencieuse d’une pièce où apparaît parfois une présence humaine, souvent méditative, tout comme un paysage à la végétation exotique où semblent cohabiter en paix l’homme et l’animal.
Elle a beaucoup voyagé, mais ses sujets sont le plus souvent le fruit de son imagination, la transcription de ses souvenirs, créant ainsi un univers paradisiaque où l’on aimerait bien séjourner : paysages ou intérieurs aux compositions presque axonométriques, conférant à ses toiles un caractère résolument contemporain. A l’instar de la peinture de David Hockney, c’est la couleur qui compte et ses assemblages, et non la réalité des choses ou la juste perspective.
L’artiste est une rêveuse et c’est ce qui transparaît dans ses toiles à la palette sensible, mettant en scène des histoires-fictions entre personnages, animaux, au cœur d’espaces colorés, donnant à ces protagonistes une présence vibrante et augmentée.
Véronique Cauchefer nous communique ses émotions et ses toiles nous invitent au voyage, nous entraînant avec bonheur dans son univers radieux, doux et voluptueux.”

“‘The work of Véronique Cauchefer exhilarates with its palette of luxuriant colours and freedom of composition. The artist has always painted with this vital need to express herself. Her studies at the Beaux-Arts will perfect her technique without diminishing the youthful spontaneity of her inspiration. Véronique Cauchefer knows how to capture the ambiance of an interior, an intimate atmosphere, the quiet serenity of a room – but also landscapes with vegetation which is often exotic in its exuberance. She has travelled widely, but her subjects are most often the fruit of her own imagination, reconfigurations of her memories, thus creating a paradisiacal universe that one longs to visit: landscapes or interiors with an almost axonometric composition, conferring on her canvases a resolutely contemporary character which features objects, furniture, openings, passages and spaces that radiate a brilliant energy. As in the paintings of David Hockney it’s the colour and its combinations that count, and not the mere reality of things or correct perspective.
 
Véronique Cauchefer is a dreamer, and that’s what we see expressed in the sensitive palette of her canvases and outlined by her colourful forms, which lend the objects a vibrant, heightened presence. She knows how to convey her emotions and her paintings invite us on a voyage, carrying us away to a radiant, sweet and voluptuous universe.”