NEW YORK, January 15, 2004 – Painter and watercolorist at heart for 18 years, living and working in New York, Joëlle Deroy decided to launch her art carrier professionally at the end of 2002, using in a new entrepreneurial spirit her business background and experience. The past year set the pace, with the creation of a web-site, three one-person shows in Manhattan, a number of commissions and, last but not least, the participation to Artexpo as a SOLO exhibitor.

Deroy started drawing at an early age and was presented to the “Concours General de Dessin” (French National Drawing Contest) in 1982. Selected at the “Ecole d’Architecture de Paris” (Architectural School of Paris), she finally decided to follow the path of a “Grande Ecole”and entered the management and business school “H.E.C.” in 1985. She always pursued though, in parallel, her artistic interests, initially at U.C. Berkeley, California (Oil Painting with Sylvia Lark) and at the Academia Dei Belli Arti in Milano, Italy (Art History). Then, she studied painting in Paris (France) for 6 years, with Yvette Maniglier who was taught by Matisse and trained both to figurative and abstract paintings, in Italy and Germany respectively.

As Deroy is always looking to draw this fine line between the beauty around and the beauty within, her paintings are more or less abstract, depending on the aspect she wants to stress the most. “The surface of the canvas is like the mirror of Alice in Wonderland”, she explains. “It is this invisible yet very real frontier between inner perception and outside world, or between abstraction and figuratism”.

A “citizen of the world” since her childhood –she was born in Texas and lived subsequently in countries as diverse as France, Libya and Indonesia- she is inspired by the Zen approach to art and by Japanese stylization “focusing on the essential”. Her latest works are finding their source in Chinese and Japanese calligraphies. They combine striking textures, with a sense of rhythm and composition derived from European tradition.

Please visit Joëlle Deroy in the SOLO pavilion (Booth 3048) or at www.artistregister.com/deroy.html.

Interview can be scheduled during January.