From children's drawings to a monumental fresco
DISCUSSION WITH CÉCILE JAILLARD
Cécile Jaillard is a multitalented artist, equally at ease behind her camera or with her large rollers to create monumental frescoes. Her world is shaped by her projects and encounters. She spent some time with schoolchildren in Morocco, and also spent 3 months at sea with Sea Shepherd. When we came up with the idea of giving continuity to the project we'd been running with schoolchildren in Villemomble, we naturally turned to her. The result: a 200m2 fresco featuring elements of the children's drawings we had collected. It was also an opportunity to find out a little more about her work and her commitments.
Can you introduce yourself in a few words?
My name is Cécile Jaillard and I currently live in Aubervilliers. I studied graphic design for a long time before graduating in 2015 from the Ecole Supérieure d'Art et Design in Valence, in the south of France, still in graphic design. Recently I've been doing mainly mural painting and occasionally set design for the theatre.
You seem to be ultra-versatile in your artistic practice, how does that come about?
After a while working as a graphic designer, I realised that computers can get boring in the long run. I needed something else to nourish me. At the same time, I've always found it very hard to define my work. When people ask "What do you do for a living?", they'd like to be able to put us in a box that corresponds to what they know. Defining myself as a graphic designer didn't work, because I also did a lot of photography and a lot of drawing, exploring different styles.
Around 2018, I started to explore the party scene through various Parisian collectives that organised events. I took advantage of this opportunity to try out other things: I was able to do a bit of set design, volume installations, decor, etc.
To come back to this versatility, I also think it's very much linked to my mobility. Every place brings me new things and new surprises. I move house a lot, and it's tiring, but I've got used to working in cycles. Ever since I was a little girl, my parents moved every school year: new house, new school, new friends.
I think it's taught me to be ready for change, to be resilient, to learn quickly so that I can perhaps adapt, appreciate and cultivate change. Every project I'm offered now is always very different, it's challenging. It's scary and stimulating at the same time. Routine frightens me... and above all, each successful project gives me more confidence in myself, and that keeps me going!
In terms of your graphic universe, it's very recognisable, how did you come to do that?
Coming from a graphic design background, I did very little drawing or painting at school. As a freelancer, I've always tried to make the most of the empty periods to practise, try new things, experiment, which I wasn't able to do during my studies. But it took me a long time...
When you look at my drawings at the beginning, it was all pencil and ink. Then one day I found myself in Bulgaria for 3 months, at the foot of a small mountain for a voluntary project, and I had an enormous amount of time. I'd put my work on hold, I didn't have many orders, no distractions like those you find in the city. So I had a lot of time... I got hold of some cheap paper and gouache and started painting plant motifs, which felt good, it was winter, I had a view of the mountains, we were warming up by the fire, it was calm and conducive to creation.
At that time, I'd only painted one fresco in Morocco, for a hotel, during a trip: I'd bartered a painting to be fed and laundered (a very good tip for a broke traveller, by the way, I recommend it). And when I started painting in Bulgaria, I just had this obsession with finding a wall and trying out my drawings in large format.
I found some cheap paper and gouache and started painting plant motifs. It felt good, it was winter, it was calm and conducive to creativity.
What are your influences and inspirations?
I was fascinated by medieval medical imagination when I was in my 3rd year at school. I was fascinated by the way the body and fluids were perceived. There was a slightly esoteric approach, we used mystery to explain things we didn't understand otherwise.
At the same time, I was quite interested in botany and medicinal plants. Linking the two, in my research I'd found images in archives of books on medicinal plants, with handwriting that wasn't always legible, and magnificent illustrations...
In fact, I wasn't so much interested in knowing what plant I was seeing in these pictures, but rather the fact that they were slightly illegible, which allowed me to use my imagination. And in the end, does it exist, or doesn't it exist... everything is possible in fact. I like this ambiguity. When you're drawing plants, it doesn't matter whether they're representations of reality or whether everything is invented. Anything can be a plant as long as there's a leaf, a flower, and any colour, you'll always understand that it's a plant. And from there, you can explore a huge range of graphic forms.
Sometimes I look at Egyptian bas-reliefs, church frontispieces, Orthodox religious representations, cave paintings... there are very specific and graphic ways of representing perspective, characters, plants or animals, gods and goddesses. Lots of symbols too. That's probably why medieval imagery has fascinated me so much. There were times when human beings were linked to the cosmos, to the animals, to the stars, and even though I'm quite down-to-earth about these issues today, I believe that this type of thinking enabled human beings to be closer to the elements that surround them and to take care of them, to take care of their exchanges with others, their relationships with nature and plants. I think we've lost this imagination and that it's detached us from our environment.
Alongside this, many of my projects are developed in collaboration with the public who use the places where I paint. These are often children, in schools, social centres and so on. And that has a big influence on my drawings, like this collaboration for Olow.
You seem to be very committed to the environmental cause. How long have you been involved? What actions have you taken?
I've been able to volunteer with a number of organisations, including Sea Shepherd, with whom I've gone on campaigns as a deckhand and sometimes as a photographer. I spent a total of three and a half months with this NGO last year. It was also an opportunity to do something different, to let go of my paintbrushes and immerse myself in an environment that had always intrigued me: life on a boat! I really felt at home, living with a small group of volunteers, campaigners for the defence of underwater life.
I've been a vegetarian since I was 18, and I'm quite active when it comes to reducing my consumption of plastic. I lived near Fontainebleau last year and we had a small vegetable garden. I've also recently taken up bicycle mechanics. This personal commitment has also been reflected in the festive scene, where I've done a lot of serious work in recent years. I was in charge of the logistics for reducing waste and raising public awareness at the Amapola festival, for example... But it took up a lot of my energy, and I ended up wondering whether organising a festival wasn't just completely anti-ecological and whether it wasn't worth putting my energy elsewhere.
I was also a volunteer for a while with Planning Familial, which is very sensitive to issues of sexist and sexual violence. But this year I've had a bit less time for voluntary projects.
How would you define your relationship with nature?
I moved from a small village in the 77 region of France, where I lived in a large shared flat in the forest, to Aubervilliers, in a very urbanised area close to a very busy road. So, alas, there's not enough nature in my daily life. But I'm keen on adventure, going hiking or climbing for a weekend with friends, making a bivouac with my little tarp, alone or with friends, sleeping outdoors, nibbling edible plants along the way, watching the insects...
My relationship with nature also means adopting slower ways of travelling, reducing my consumption of carbon-based energy, prioritising hitchhiking and travelling by bike. And despite everything, I say that, but I also sometimes find myself in a big cognitive dissonance when I paint, because I use chemicals, I have a car that I use for my worksites... sometimes I think I'd like to give up my paintbrushes and go and dig the earth and grow potatoes instead!
This collection comes from the observation that humans have become disconnected from nature. What do you think?
As for me, I became aware of this at a fairly young age, I became eco-anxious, I had to stop reading about the collapse, it didn't fit at all (instead, I read about feminism, which doesn't fit at all either!). But in fact, saying that human beings are disconnected from nature has been going on for decades, for centuries!
Besides, if I say "Better Together" to you, what does it instinctively evoke?
I'm thinking first and foremost of a way of collaborating with others to create a new world. From the image of a child's hand in a tiger's paw, we can imagine an idyllic world that respects the differences and limits of others. A pact of mutual benevolence!
You run a lot of workshops with children, how did you come to do this?
It was a big coincidence. I landed in Morocco in 2019 during a three-month solo trip. I arrived in a village called Tizi n'Oucheg, where I met Moroccan mountain guides who took me around the little villages at the end of the tracks. They gave me paper, brushes and paint from the bottom of drawers, and told me "you're an artist, you're going to paint with the children in the schools"!
At the time, the people spoke the Berber specific to this region of the High Atlas. I had a very friendly interpreter with me who dropped me off in the village, where I stayed for 2 days before coming back to pick me up. I stayed with the teachers' family. It was an incredible experience. Once the interpreter had left, the only way to understand each other was to draw: I had a notebook in which we scribbled, and it was amazing, we managed to make sense of our exchanges.
When I came back, an association school in Saint Mandé, La Charpente, offered me a one-year contract to run workshops in a school. I owe a lot to the family who ran the school, and I learnt everything there. Children are full of ideas when you give them the right tools. They don't have that mental barrier that adults have who think they "can't draw". It's not a question of knowing how to draw! There are lots of other ways of creating.
Can you tell us more about the fresco you produced for us?
I collected the drawings that the children had made during a workshop, and then I sorted them out a bit, keeping the animals, insects, houses, etc. The idea was to create a fun trail around the playground. Another challenge was to paint in a giant format for a limited time. For licensing reasons, I only had one day to paint the equivalent of half a handball pitch, or 200m2! This was a major constraint, forcing me to adopt a graphic style to get the job done quickly. Everything was painted with a roller, and I literally finished my day running to finish on time!
I opted for a temporary paint, which is tinted Meudon white, with a plant-based binder that's safe for the water table and soil. It also made more sense for the Better Together collection to use environmentally friendly products. We drew a huge grid on a large square measuring 20m by 20m. I'd also printed out my design on an A4 sheet of paper with a grid and transferred my squares one after the other. It takes a lot of concentration because you can't stand back like you can when you're painting on a vertical wall.
Any future projects you'd like to tell us about?
I'm starting work this week in Villiers le Bel to paint the porch of a residence, the same place where I did a project in May 2022, which won the "1 immeuble 1 œuvre" prize awarded by the Minister of Culture. In November I'm working on a playground for a primary school in the Marais district. In these two projects, I'm offering time for adults and children to paint with me. And after that, a few small projects that I'm still keeping secret.
Cécile Jaillard
