Béatrice Dreux
Beatrice Dreux, credit: Haddad
How do you describe what you do to someone who doesn’t know your art at all?
Béatrice Dreux: It’s painting. Neither objects, nor people, nor everyday items are shown. In a way, the images work like ICONS, but without a religious aspect. Spherical things like clouds, rainbows, tears/drops, God-images and OCTOPUSSYS have been the main topics of my work in recent years. Whether the work is finished is determined by if they breathe. The works are mostly dominated by the color black in all its facets. Oil chalk, glitter, oil paint, and acrylic paint are the materials.
There are artists who work best in hotel rooms, others need a lot of space. What are your ideal working conditions?
Ideally, you have two places. One in the city to communicate with others, and one in the country or by the sea in total isolation to be able to dig deeper into the topics.
In business, it is sometimes extremely important to network. How important is it for an artist?
It is simply necessary. Not for work, but for everything else.
Photo: Lukas Dostal
If you didn’t live Vienna, where would you live?
On a Greek island.
The beginning is the most difficult – like the first stroke on a white canvas. How do you start a new work?
It can be difficult at times. But almost more difficult is the situation when a picture is almost finished. Suddenly everything can collapse again and sometimes months of work can be ruined.
How or where do you find inspiration?
Not in museums anymore, but rather when strolling around, in a café by the sea, and in the studio.
Big Dark Cloud Detail
What inspires you in Vienna? Which museums, exhibition halls, galleries, etc. do you visit frequently?
The Natural History Museum, the Art History Museum, the Belvedere, the Volkskundemuseum, and the district museums. The Viennese cafés, birth houses, and bookstores. The Wienerwald, too.
Do you have a personal work ritual that you like to implement?
Walking from the 8th district to the studio in the 4th district, then seeing what happened and continuing to work.
If you weren’t an artist, what would you do?
There is nothing else.
Octopussy with pink Cloud, 230 x 190cm, 2019
What are the best moments in your job and which are the most difficult?
The concentrated situation in the studio and producing a piece of art, as well as having people who have supported me for decades, that’s fantastic. On the other hand: to be an artist with a child is an incredibly difficult situation.
What is your dream project that you have not yet implemented?
A studio by the sea.
