LORRAINE MAHOT DE LA QUERANTONNAIS
French - born 1982
Born in France, Lorraine Mahot de la Querantonnais earned her BFA from Parsons School of Design and furthered her studies at the Florence Academy of Art in Italy and Ar.Co in Portugal. Over the past decade, her work has been featured in numerous exhibitions throughout Europe. She currently lives and works between Lisbon and Saint Barthélemy.
Working with crushed pigments, sand, glass powder, and linseed oil, Mahot approaches painting with an instinctive immediacy. Her compositions emerge through a process that is both intuitive and immersive, transforming familiar surroundings into richly imagined worlds. Whether depicting intimate interiors or scenes observed from her terrace, she begins with the landscapes and moments closest at hand. Evenings spent away from the distractions of Saint Barth's celebrated nightlife become an opportunity for observation, reflection, and creation.
Mahot's paintings of the island transcend straightforward representation. Through a distinctive visual language that dismantles traditional perspective, she constructs dreamlike environments where forms drift freely across the picture plane and subjects are viewed from multiple vantage points simultaneously. Echoes of Matisse and the spontaneity of naïve painting resonate throughout her work, yet her vision remains unmistakably her own.
Despite their playful narratives, flattened forms, and occasional surreal interventions, Mahot's paintings remain deeply rooted in place. Those familiar with Saint Barthélemy will recognize its landmarks and rhythms: waves breaking against the shoreline below a seaside cemetery, the swell dividing around a small islet, the contours of Lorient and Tortue, and the ever-present airport with its mechanical birds tracing paths across the sky.
Her paintings often resist the convention of a singular vanishing point. Space folds, expands, and hovers, creating a sense of suspended reality that mirrors the island itself—an environment whose beauty, intimacy, and allure make departure seem almost impossible. In Mahot's world, Saint Barthélemy is not merely a subject; it becomes a state of mind.
