Art in everyday life

When Avel paints, the conversation is private. A feeling finds expression in a color, then a shape, as she works between what she sees and what she senses. These quiet hours belong to her, with space to become absorbed in her imagination.

She follows no fixed composition. The season influences her mood, and an arrangement develops through the work itself. Sometimes she builds a garden. Elsewhere, a form expresses movement or holds something of a particular moment. She lets the direction emerge as she makes it.

For some pieces, she takes artificial flowers apart and recomposes their elements over a base of acrylic or oil. Materials found along the way become part of the surface, adding volume until the painting approaches sculpture. This is what she means by building a garden of her own: a place she constructs through feeling, where she enjoys spending time.

Around thirty works have come from this private practice. Each involved time set aside for an intimate exchange between emotion and making. She hopes painting will have a larger place in her future, with longer, unhurried hours to remain at the canvas and see what develops.

Since the 1990s, Avel has visited art fairs in Maastricht and Art Basel, returning whenever possible. She seeks out galleries and exhibitions across Europe and North America, places where she becomes absorbed in the work around her. Art offers her a refuge. She leaves with a renewed mind and ideas for her work and daily life. Contemporary figurative painting holds a particular attraction, especially pieces whose added materials give them a sculptural presence.

Years of observation have made techniques, materials and color familiar territory. She notices how a surface has been built, follows the construction and looks for the relationship between an artist’s intention and the finished piece. Encountering younger artists, she recognizes choices suggesting an emerging visual language and considers where they might lead. Feeling guides her response, alongside an understanding of the decisions behind what she sees.

She values a language developed with consistency over time. Recognizing an artist’s work across different pieces and seeing a philosophy pursued with determination and creativity give her confidence in the direction it is taking.

“It was alive. It spoke to me.”

In Vietnam, Avel walked through workshops where large marble sculptures were being made and stopped before a female figure. Its strength and scale drew her closer. She found it beautiful and unmistakably feminine, and it reminded her of Picasso.

She commissioned it for the garden of one of her homes. The figure took six months to reach Italy. Avel counted the days and pictured the view from her window each morning.

The arrival demanded as much planning as the wait. The figure stands about two and a half meters high, so a substantial base was built to carry its weight and specialist companies lifted it into place.

Once it stood in the garden, she felt happy and alive. She is grateful to have found it so far from home and to have brought it back.