Deirdre Campbell: Where Color Grows

At Deirdre Campbell’s, whom those close to her affectionately call “Dida,” the textures catch the light as landscapes hold the wind. Before her canvases, everyone is free to see a tranquil sea, a silent moor, a stormy sky, or the last reflections of a setting sun. The multicolored armfuls of flowers never tell the whole story. They suggest…

“The sky never stops”: the collection’s canvas.

Even as a little girl, insomnia drove her to draw on the walls of the house. Her mother never erased these first creative impulses. At school too, she was allowed to do as she pleased. Immersed in her artistic, avant-garde family culture and supported by her art teacher, Deirdre quickly understood that creating means first looking at the world with curiosity and confidence. These are the foundations of her freedom as an artist.

Her work speaks of life, sings of the seasons, and embraces disappearance as much as rebirth. Her artistic sensibility defies perfection: layers stride across overly orderly surfaces, material covers flatness, and accidents crack normality. Like life, her painting is challenging and makes you see every color.

ARTIST: We have known each other for more than twenty years. You were born in Ireland. What have you kept from your homeland?

DEIRDRE: The magic… especially the fairytale quality. And this rather fun way of being together. After university, I left alone for the United States, then Canada, my mother’s country. Elsewhere, this period of youth gave me an immense sense of freedom, which I recorded in little notebooks through writing and drawing.

ARTIST: Do Irish horizons still live in your paintings?

DEIRDRE: Very much so. In Connemara, the region my paternal grandmother came from, the sky never stops.  Within a few minutes, the sun gives way to clouds, then to a shower before a break in the clouds appears. This shifting, supernatural light reveals the moors, lakes, and cliffs. I am still deeply imbued with it.

ARTIST: And how did Ireland lead you to Burgundy?

DEIRDRE: (laughs) Because a Frenchman convinced me to share his good wines and his life!

Burgundy offers her another palette. Between Beaune and Chalon-sur-Saône, the stones change hue, mist waters the vines, the soil ripens the grapes, and the calendar unfolds from green to the reddened golds of autumn. Clear blues give way to pearl grays, ochres, and evening pinks. Two lands, two worlds… Two powerful, changeable lights that recognize their differences.

When she settles in Chalon-sur-Saône, she gradually transforms a plot overrun with brush into an extraordinary garden. Cosmos, grasses, perennials, and spontaneous blooms create a constantly changing setting. This garden becomes her first studio, beneath the open sky. There, she listens to sounds, contemplates chiaroscuro, and captures nature’s variations.

DEIRDRE: “Well… We’re going to visit the studio. It isn’t very clean… It’s a real mess!”

No staging. Brushes spill out of jars, and cardboard bears the traces of thousands of gestures. As in the flower beds right next door, nothing is fixed. A joyful bustle reigns over the pots of industrial oil paint, specially made for her. Everything reveals a flourishing production.

Deirdre never paints at an easel. Often kneeling, sometimes sitting on a small stool, she works on the canvas laid directly on the floor or on her legs, against her body.

DEIRDRE: “I need to be physically inside the thing. My hands on it.”

The creation progresses without a predetermined route, through a secret orchestration.

DEIRDRE: “I start with an idea… Then sometimes everything changes. So I move on to another before returning to it.”

Some works remain one-of-a-kind; others naturally become diptychs, sometimes even triptychs. Even when the colors grow deeper, one certainty remains. No haste. Each painting follows the rhythm of her fertility. 

Several variations are born at the same time in this way.

DEIRDRE: “There is always a touch of light, of hope, inside. Each work is traversed by this burst of life.”

DEIRDRE: “I like people to want to touch my paintings. For the paint to come out of the canvas. For it to be alive. So that you can feel it beneath your fingers, farther than the eyes can reach.”

Between the garden and painting, between Ireland and Burgundy, there is no boundary. Flowers bloom abundantly, the sky stretches out in its infinite nuances, and the light imposes its whims. Deirdre Campbell gathers this energy, transforms it, and blends it with her own.

Captivated by her free, deeply sensitive painting and her sense of beauty, Brigitte and François proposed an artistic collaboration to Deirdre Campbell.

DEIRDRE: “Yes… Why not?”

A simple, spontaneous response, reflecting a connection that comes naturally.

It was this freedom, this strength of life, and this singular sensitivity that captivated Brigitte and François. Gripped by everything that exults on the canvas, they  imagined, then brought to life a collection of wearable art.

From August 21 to 30, discover a presentation infused with rare emotional power, the new ARTIST session: “The sky never stops.”