Librairie Central, Ferney-Voltaire.
The meeting with Jane Le Besque took place in the garden of the central bookshop in Ferney-Voltaire, where she was signing her book “Un soufflé de pollen“. Initially, the author wanted to make a catalogue of her drawings and sought to insert pages of text “to air it out”. Then the idea came to her to imagine the recipes of our “distant ancestors, the pickers of the Neolithic” with flowers and leaves, to which are added the memories of good moments of family complicity and of friendship around a table.
Two strings to his bow-
Jane Le Besque had hung some paintings on the walls of the garden, like beautiful bright spots on the vegetation. To welcome the public, she had made recipes from her book, as delicious as they were original. Artistic and culinary talents are often complementary: Jane has both strings to her bow.
Originally from Sussex, England, Jane Le Besque has a grandfather from Brittany, hence her name. After training at art schools in Birmingham and Paris, she exhibited in France and Switzerland. Her last exhibition has just finished in Romainmôtier.
Living in the Pays de Gex with her family for the last eight years, she has worked with other painters from the region and in 2006 she produced an artist’s book with the poet Joël Bastard.
The Pays de Gex, land of adoption-
For the past twenty years, the artist has been moving from oil painting on wood to collage, to which she has devoted herself completely over the past five years. Her technique starts from a painting torn or cut out in a gesture of colour, to which inks, walnut stain or water paint, particularly appreciated for its movement on paper, are added.
“The collages are very mobile, you can move everything around,” says Jane, “I find materials that I collect in the woods, for cooking and painting,” she adds, “the flowers end up either in a dish or in a painting! “The landscapes of the Pays de Gex are a constant source of inspiration for Jane Le Besque. She likes to walk very early, when it’s still dark, and pick the ingredients for her creations.
