My story

Nathalie de Ligondés was born in 1958 in Bergerac, Dordogne, into an old family where artistic sense and creativity coexist, resulting in, among others, architects, painters, art restorers, several engineers, a dressmaker, and a renowned fashion designer.

After studying Law, she spent 10 years working as an executive in several companies, which she decided to leave to take over a small business where color played an important role. This is how she became a distributor of a beautiful Swedish home linen brand and created her own collection. She currently represents a very beautiful Lithuanian brand of linen clothing and home textiles.

Meanwhile, her paintbrush began to ‘itch’ -as she puts it- more and more, and with advice from some family members and friends, she tried her hand at copying: a caryatid from the Sistine Chapel, distant details from Brueghel’s paintings, panoramas inspired by David Roberts, the gazes of Klimt… Her whimsical and independent spirit gradually led her to add animals, characters, and mythical beings to these attempts, which increasingly diverged from the original works.

Then, one day in an attic, she came across a large, knotty, and hole-filled plank, in which she saw the villages of the Dogon people that her grandfather used to tell her about in her childhood. This encounter with old wood allowed her to soothe the ‘itch of the paintbrush’ that would never leave her, becoming irresistible, overwhelming, and utterly fascinating. As her brushes moved, her Dogon villages gradually became populated with characters, human or mythical, real or mystical animals, whimsical creations where colors (mainly earth tones: ochres, siennas, umbers) mingle with an imaginary bestiary or characters with often frightening gazes, stretching out on planks that form totems.

Nathalie de Ligondés, self-taught artist, draws us into her raw art, without any pretension of conveying a particular message. As she simply puts it: ‘It has to come out, and what better way to let it out than through my brushes?

FIRST STEPS >First attempts, first deviance