Estée: When Painting and Writing Capture What Words Can't
A visual artist and writer, Estée has spent the past fifteen years exploring painting and writing, two languages that she continually reinvent to tell her story. Rather than placing one above the other, she sees them as complementary forms of expression, each revealing something the other cannot. A self-taught artist based in Paris, Estée has developed a distinctive artistic universe shaped by her travels, encounters and the emotions stirred by the places she discovers. For the past two years, she has been working on what she describes as the project of her life: J’écoute, a collection bringing together around twenty texts and twenty artworks.
The project offers an intimate journey into her inner world, exposing sensations, memories and emotions while inviting the audience to discover a deeply personal universe.
Estée’s writing does not attempt to describe reality as it is, but rather to capture the echoes it leaves behind.
“Writing is a way for me to look at things differently, to slow down what is passing, and to hold on to what is escaping,” she says.
When Painting and Writing Collide
For Estée, painting and writing exist on the same level. They coexist and interact, creating a larger, more harmonious body of work.
Her painting was born from a desire to preserve what might otherwise disappear. Highly intuitive, it does not illustrate her texts. Instead, it extends them, giving shape to what words cannot fully express. Writing, meanwhile, allows her to explore memories and experiences with greater precision, giving meaning to what she has felt.
“I try to transform everything I go through and every moment of my life into painting, collage or writing,” Estée explains.
Her inspiration comes from almost everything around her: everyday life, the urban environment, sounds, smells, colors and emotions. But travel remains one of her central themes.
Traveling to Feel
Throughout her work, Estée moves between external and internal landscapes, between what is seen and what is felt, between lived experience and the emotions it can awaken.
Her landscapes are not simply representations of places. They become starting points for emotions and questions that may otherwise remain hidden.
“Travel means leaving behind your habits and your landmarks and immersing yourself in the unknown. As a result, you become much more attentive to what you perceive, to what you can sense in people and to the places you visit. A light, a piece of architecture, a smell, a color, an atmosphere — all of this becomes imprinted on me and eventually becomes fuel for my creativity. Travel awakens feelings within me that I later transmit through my work,” she says.
Questioning, openness to the world and introspection lie at the heart of her artistic process. Through a process of transformation, Estée does not seek to reproduce the places she encounters, but to extract the sensations they leave behind.
From the Personal to the Universal
Estée often begins with a fragment. Her distinctive style brings together scattered elements, particularly through collage, a technique she especially enjoys. Each element is carefully selected and worked on, while instinct remains an essential part of the process.
Her artistic universe is influenced in particular by Basquiat and Raoul Dufy, two artists whose work has inspired her own dialogue between energy and lightness, strength and delicacy.
“I select letters and words from newspapers and cut them out. They become signposts within my compositions. I also collect materials from the street because I attach great importance to the environment,” she says.
Yet her work is not simply autobiographical. By transforming personal experiences into images and words, Estée turns the intimate into something that can be shared.
“I like taking the viewer off the beaten track, where they can sometimes get a little lost in my art before finding their way again. The paintings are journeys, sometimes wanderings, colorful walks through hidden territories within me,” the artist says.
Estée has already exhibited her work in several venues, including Parisian libraries, the Carrousel du Louvre and in Miami.
A Collection Without Boundaries
The themes explored in Estée’s writing are deliberately diverse: love, colors, nature, travel and the sea, as well as her Jewish identity, which occupies an important place in the collection.
“My Jewish identity is very strong, even though I am not particularly observant in France. I really hope to introduce my work to French-speaking audiences in Israel. I would like to strengthen my connection with Israel,” she explains.
“For me, Jewish identity is something deeply personal. It is about feeling connected to places, cities and landscapes that represent stages in a much larger history — the history of exile and of continuing to exist. My Jewish identity does not distance me from the world. On the contrary, it connects me to it even more.”
That relationship between the personal and the universal is central to J’écoute. Estée does not seek to impose a single interpretation on her work. Instead, she wants audiences to find their own meaning in the texts and paintings and, ultimately, to make them their own.
The project is still taking shape, but its final piece has already been chosen.
The collection ends with a text entitled Vivre — To Live — which describes human beings as unfinished canvases, made of “light and dust.”
“Living is not about being a perfect color. It is about accepting that you are a landscape made of storms, clear mornings and pale mornings,” Estée concludes.
In that sense, J’écoute is more than a collection of paintings and texts. It is an attempt to capture what usually escapes us: the fleeting sensations, places, memories and emotions that quietly shape who we become.
Estée's website : https://www.galeries-estee.com
Caroline Haïat
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