Painting the landscape to get a better look: Isabelle Merlet paints her Provence, this « high country» described by Jean Giono, the back roads and paths, the lazy days of skipping school, the horizons that awe, the blinding snapshots of an arid Provence where the Tachism and the material on the canvas allow one to minimize the depth of the scene, to flatten the landscape like Les Nabis did long before her, with their particular aspect that is implied by the simplification and the piercing distribution of color and tone.
The wonderment carries us on a voyage, in a royal manner of starting the journey, magnificently free, like Stendhal wrote. Neither too close, nor too far, at just the right distance, Isabelle Merlet take the colors literally, lets them breather in open air, shares their enthusiasm, and trusts them, with open eyes.
Color studies, object teaching, these Provencal fantasies capture the gaze of the wanderer, this feast for the eyes where beauty, clarity, the lightness of the vanishing lines are there, available, and which allow the landscapes, the flowers, and the men, to be amazed at belonging to the same world and to never tire, this idea of beginnings of movement where these great escapes become promises of beauty.
This is what we call enchantment.
