Danielle Creme
United Kingdom / Switzerland
Danielle Creme's work is a mixture of realism and abstraction. It stems from the artist's deep need to connect with others and herself. In her oil on canvas portraits, figurative paintings and stone sculptures she explores the relationships between people. Her work captures the emotions and challenges that arise from these intimate exchanges.
Danielle Creme uses a modern, abstract, realistic style to explore the strength and vulnerability that people strive for and struggle with. Often themes of femininity and identity are explored, as well as loss, loneliness and indecision. The idea of duality, being torn apart and the deep emotional struggles that result are expressed through contrasts in choice of colour, texture and composition.
Each work tells its own story, forcing the viewer to confront the emotions depicted and reflect on their own strength and vulnerability.
Danielle Creme: How much longer? / Oil on Canvas, 100x120cm, 2021
The pull of two extremes or opposites is a recurrent theme in Creme's work. This painting was born out of a renewed search for self after pregnancy, when your body no longer feels like yours, when your identity fades and your role as a mother comes to the fore. It's about struggling to hold on to all that makes you who you are.
Danielle Creme: You are Enough / Oil on Canvas, 80x70cm, 2023
Sometimes it's hard to show how we really feel for fear of being judged or dismissed, and society often encourages us to hide it or away from it. But what unites us is the sharing of experiences and emotions, and allowing ourselves to be vulnerable to ourselves and each other. When this is received with kindness and empathy, a strong bond of trust and friendship is formed. And our humanity overcomes our fear.
Danielle Creme: I am out with lanterns looking for myself / Oil on Canvas, 90x120cm, 2023
The third in the series exploring self-awareness is this painting in which the connection to self is echoed through the connection to nature. The recurring imagery of wings and flight, the ripe, berry-laden vines intertwining the figure's hands, and the upward, skyward pose all suggest a joy and celebration of being. The gaze is no longer directed at another or at oneself, but at a union with nature and the dissolution of boundaries between the physical and the spiritual.
Danielle Creme: Torso I / White Alabaster on Serpentine stand, 66x24x11cm, 66kg, 2023
There is something so visceral about creating an image from stone. The shear physical exertion feels like giving birth to the creation and somehow it feels as if the energy is passed from the artist to the sculpture, like genes from mother to child. This sculpture represents the unity between our male and female selves. The carved space connects each side, and therefore the entity, to the space around it.
Danielle Creme: Ophelia / Oil on canvas, 80x70cm, 2023
"There's rosemary, that's for remembrance. Pray you, love, remember. And there is pansies, that's for thoughts... There's fennel for you, and columbines. There's rue for you, and here's some for me. We may call it herb of grace o' Sundays. Oh, you must wear your rue with a difference. There's a daisy. I would give you some violets, but they withered all when my father died."
Hamlet. Act 4, Scene 5; lines 199-201;204-209
Danielle Creme: Titania / Oil on Canvas, 80x70cm, 2023
"I know a bank where the wild thyme blows, Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows, Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine, With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine: There sleeps Titania sometime of the night, Lull'd in these flowers with dances and delight; And there the snake throws her enamelled skin, Weed wide enough to wrap a fairy in."
A midsummer Night's Dream, Act 2; Scene 1, Lines 249-256
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