Marie Jacotey is an artist who makes artwork we can all relate to. Her drawings offer an insight into the rawness of human relationships. The bitterness of rejection, the crushing blow of a break up and downright awkward social encounters; Marie covers it all in her textural figurative drawings and paintings.
Marie was born in Paris but moved to London to continue her studies. She studied her MA in Printmaking at the Royal College of Art, all whilst making her characteristic coloured-pencil drawings. She’s been releasing books and zines, had a couple of solo shows and even collaborated with Alexander McQueen on the release of a series of bags. She primarily draws women, who are defiant, determined and strong. Her protagonists are usually thin, blonde, white and almost like a stereotype or blanket vision of a woman from a french film or Mills and Boon cover.
Marie grew up on comics, an avid consumer and reader of anything that combined words and pictures. This has inevitably influenced her art-making, which starts from a library of materials she obsessively collects. Notes, sketches, snatches of conversation, reference images grabbed from social media and personal photos all make up the inspiration bank. As well as her own archives, she’s inspired by themes of love and death, literature, and cinema in the realm of French ‘Nouvelle Vague’. The resulting drawings are works of fantasy or of loosely observed relationships, never autobiographical narratives. They’re sexy, sinister, often sad yet resolutely strong.
See more of Marie Jacotey —