In Moret-sur-Loing, Françoise LEROUX begins by painting an apple under the guidance of her father, a great drawing lover, who knew Picasso. So Cézanne or Picasso ? No, rather Van Gogh, who fascinated her with his brushstroke-shaped touch, and who haunted her first paintings. Impossible to escape your destiny when you bathe in an environment where art nourishes you every day, to such an extent that the restaurant created by his aunt is called "La Palette"! And there is also this canvas by Modigliani found in the cabin of a woodman in the forest of Fontainebleau, discovered by a cousin of the artist ...

Later, in Paris, Françoise LEROUX runs a flower shop. She never stopped painting and she obviously makes huge bouquets of flowers that decorate her surroundings. One day, the late painter Georges Mathieu enters his shop; she asks him his opinion on his painting. He replies "Continue"! The artist never needed encouragement to "continue", but she still waited 20 years before making her first exhibition. And it took her 20 years to move from figurative painting to abstract painting: she switched to the abstract following her encounter with German expressionists.

“Seeing differently” is what guides her.

So, even if it is always about landscapes, the large abstract compositions, lyrical, in movement, in power, of Françoise Leroux, evoke this notion of landscape without ever being confined in the representation or the description. The pictorial childbirth is often painful, the artist plunges the iron into the flesh of the color. She never uses brushes, knives and hands come into action on the canvas in an intense melee that Mathieu would not have denied. Colorist as well in her monochromes as in her paintings, where she uses whites and blacks, Françoise Leroux ventures on the shores of a painting in phase with her generous, sensual and extrovert temperament. As the young people would say, "She has rabies"! But she does not always emerge victorious from her fight with form, depth and composition. So, in this duel, as she likes to win, she sometimes sidesteps obstacles, resumes paintings, abandoned and unfinished, years later.

"Go elsewhere" is what guides her.

After the acrylic came the walnut stain. The trigger?  His visit to the Soulages exhibition and the discovery of the of Sienna color under its blacks. Today, it is tars, wax, then walnut stain with the birth of inks. Tomorrow will be something else.

FRANCOISE LEROUX or fifty years of hymn to painting, against all odds. With this artist, the painting that some bury quickly, is very much alive. Life !! It pulsates at a hundred miles an hour in flamboyant colors or in shadows and lights. In powerful compositions, the clash between two elements is recurrent. With the series in ochres and Sienna color… abstract landscapes halfway between Delacroix and Victor Hugo, Françoise Leroux wins the duel! Even if for an artist, the war is never won ...

Brigitte Camus - Art critic

Studies, awards and distinctions

1963: Diploma from the Paris School of Plastic Art

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1967/1972: Orientation towards Floral Art

Diploma from the Higher School of Horticulture of Versailles

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1969: 1st Prize at the International Floralies of Paris

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1972: Named "Meilleur Ouvrier de France" for Floral Art in Paris

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1970/1981: Student of Fine Arts School of Paris

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2005: 1st Grand'Ouest Regional Prize for Painting

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2005: 3rd National Prize of Lyon's club

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2006: 1st Public Prize for Sculpture - La Baule (44)

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2009: Exhibited by the City of Paris at the Carrousel du Louvre for "Les Grands Maîtres de Demain"

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2012: Silver Medal of Arts and Letters of Brittany

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From 2016:

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Teacher in Painting and Drawing lessons for children and adults at the "Carré d'Art" in Binic (22)