25. c0l0rès in the bosco

Green card given to Béatrice Saurel and Michel Racine

published at 19/06/2018

cOlOrès, Festival International des Jardins 2009 - © Éric Sander

Making of a common wood

A sacred wood of prayer:

“Pray, please take care of the wood”

Colour brings us together.

Béatrice wanted to paint a wood

Make a cOlOres© space

at Chaumont created

from colour.

From garden to landscape,

I am looking for

the shared values of

the western, Islamic and

oriental cultures,

in relation to the sky, mountain, water and forest.

In this wood

without visible qualities,

we found a pleasing hole.

A small crater,

a kind of love-nest,

to dream in aloud:

saying “And there we will have”.

Colour reveals a site,

a forgotten corner creates a landscape

a wood full of sprites

from the inhabited woods

of the thousands of sacred woods all over the world:

Ouagadougou sacred wood,

Sacro Bosco de Bomarzo

Forest of Broceliande

Takian Thong Wood

Little Sparta, etc.

Coming closer to the virtually universal roots of the sacred wood

finding a new vital link between man and forest,

painting trees,

what could be more natural?

Allowing the wood to sing

like a body,

is to touch on the sacred,

reveal what is sacred in nature,

and consecrate nature.

Careful however

designers

Béatrice SAUREL, landscape artist, and Michel RACINE, landscape architect and town planner

FRANCE

As a consultant for the creation and enhancement of gardens and cultural landscapes, Michel Racine contributes to the programming and design of gardens and to the development of tourism adapted to the landscapes. He is the author of numerous publications, including several reference works on gardens and garden creators, and in 1990 he wrote the Guide to Gardens in France, which has been continuously updated ever since. In 2006, after the discovery of his thesis COULEURS (COLOURS) in the history of gardens 2006 and of his talent for transforming space using colour, he joined up with the artist Béatrice Saurel to develop projects in which he seeks to transcend the views of landscape architects and gardeners through a strong plastic arts approach. Currently, they are creating the “Association de compétences” (Skills Association) together, a structure open to a dialogue between complementary skills, the message from them all being reflected on the garden and landscape and/or do some work on them.

From her studio to nature itself, Béatrice Saurel for some years has been continuing to create work based on the concept of Human Nature, plastic research into man’s position in his living landscapes. Her interventions on and in nature range from paintings to garden projects and artist’s installations in nature. She gave the name “c0l0rès©” to her projects involving the transformation of space using colour, and more particularly wood areas, where the tree is adorned like a man’s or woman’s body. Painting trunks in colour is dressing them, with natural pigments and binders, to translate their vitality into poetry. Colour is also clothing on trunks, like rags on nail trees, a call for attention, a prayer. A prayer to take care of the tree. Through colour, she transforms her trees into a sacred wood, a human nature, closer to the forest of columns of the Torii gates of Kyoto’s temples than to the forest of a nature park. - “Painting trees is touching what is sacred.” Since 2006 she has been working with Michel Racine on landscape projects within the framework of “Association de compétences” (Skills Association).