If you can’t go to art, art will come to you: Véronique Gray – Art as a form of reinventing yourself

“Everyone has the potential to become an encourager…All you have to do is care about people and initiate.” -John C. Maxwell

Many of you know Véronique Gray as the founder of Vivamost, an eclectic, up-to-date online magazine from Zurich, which tackles a wide range of topics, including Culture and Entertainment, Health and Well-Being, Travel, Fashion, Eat and Drink , Women Entrepreneurs, Psychology, Empowerment, Sports but also Favourite Products and Services. What is truly remarkable about Véronique’s initiative is that her magazine is a prolific multicultural medium, constantly encouraging and facilitating a voice for a wide audience of women, contributors coming from colourful and diverse backgrounds. Many of these women have one thing in common, they are all in search of a path and Vivamost provides them opportunities for exchanging valuable information, networking and communication.

Besides managing an online magazine that has been featuring a wide range of captivating topics for over a decade, Véronique Gray is a self-taught artist. Painting has redefined her life and has helped her overcome most distressing and difficult periods during her journey. She is a cancer survivor, who struggled with a series of severe burnouts, years of chronic pain and anorexia. She went through separation from her husband, fought depression and alienation and ultimately resorted to painting as a salvation, a decision that brought about a most captivating search for redemption.

It is the fragility of her life and the scars she accumulated, that gain powerful reflections in her mixed media. There is an inherent tension and a constant interplay between fragility and an incredibly powerful representative artistic arsenal. Her paintings exude a mystical power, a latent and captivating inner torment, that invade our senses, by means of large, elaborate canvases.

The very first attempt of resorting to art was generated by the television daily show of Bob Ross. Véronique came across his tutorials upon her arrival to the States, in 1990. The facileness and naturalness of the act of painting is what caught her attention and the desire to try it, came almost instantaneously. However, it was later on that she immersed herself in the process of creation.

As a child she did not like drawing. Moreover, painting used to be a torture in school. Later on, she became captivated by the history of art and most precisely by the old masters. Each time she would travel abroad, she would ardently visit museums whenever she had the opportunity. However, the act of painting seemed far too distant, abstract and unattainable until 2015, when she was recovering from a severe burnout in a clinic, in Switzerland.

The painting sessions were part of the therapeutic process and it was during those first encounters with the brush and the canvas, that she discovered a way of healing the pain that had been piling up over the years. Her very first drawing was inspired by a most tragic sequence of events. The first meeting took place in the aftermath of the Paris massacre at the Bataclan, resulting in 129 deaths and over 350 wounded. The art instructor told her to pick three colours and start expressing her feelings. She recalls the shock and the feeling of disorientation upon hearing the terrifying news.

She painted blood falling from the sky.

 “Often it’s the deepest pain which empowers you to grow into your highest self.” Karen Salmansohn

Fighting breast cancer, along with a severe burnout, had left her void of any strength and will to recover. She was merely surviving, instead of living. Sleeping and eating were often next to impossible. She had lost interest even in the people she loved the most. Art was no longer only a way of expression, it turned into a means of survival, a way of life itself. She gradually discovered a passion for painting that ultimately saved her life.

After trying out gouache, watercolour, oil, pastel and acrylic, Véronique chose acryl in the end. Creating abstract sceneries but experimenting with mixed media as well is what she enjoys the most. The combination of these two can render most accurately the magnitude of certain emotions and feelings. This is a painting which was created within a couple of hours during her stay in the clinic. It is the result of an unprecedented experimentation with the cheese spatula. The viewer is transported into the colourful autumn atmosphere by means of elaborate leaf prints and the exquisite combination of colours and shades.

There is an undeniable expressionistic sensibility around her work. A mixture of melancholy and hope, an intriguing parallelism achieved by means of juxtaposition of fragility and a sudden explosion of feelings. A captivating approach that combines frailty and strength, reflecting the two extremes we inevitably find ourselves swirled in, from time to time. Although there are still reminiscences of the storm, the orange and pink rays of colour render hope. The canvas is an endless medium, there are no limitations, we can be witnessing either the waves of a real sea or a frozen abstract scenery. The white fragments are open to interpretation as well. The pink and mauve colours bring a sense of achievement. One is where one should be and there is a feeling of serenity besides the melancholy. She rarely likes to give titles to her paintings. Titles restrict, automatically impose frames and reduce the wide range of choices and possibilities. The creative process is a constant fluctuation, is a moment in time and it is so rich in nuances and feelings that it would be a mistake to believe that it can be accurately depicted or rendered within a title.

BLUE MOUNTAINS

Although she is a self-taught artist, guided mostly by her emotions and creative intuitions, there is a genetic predisposition towards painting, she can resort to. Her grandfather from her mother’s side was an accomplished artist, painter, musician and writer and her father as well has specific inclinations towards drawing. This painting was made during the first lockdown in March 2020. During that distressing period, she went through a rather prolific period, creating several paintings. She used lots of golden colours, which turned the blue mountains into a sparkling reflection of reality. The water is a central element in Véronique’s painting, due to its unique qualities. It is purifying and it has the ability of reflecting light, while amplifying it in all its beauty and richness.

TWO WOMEN

This exquisite mixed media was created last year, in March, during the lockdown. It was generated by an amalgam of feelings. Véronique was overcome by a sudden solitude as her vernissage had been cancelled due to lockdown regulations and at the same time she felt somehow trapped, separated from her paintings, as they were still hanging on the walls of the exhibition. She started to create a new series of paintings and the objective was to integrate in each of those paintings some sort of fabric. She had been experimenting before with plaster, sand, gold flakes and textiles of Jakob Schlaepfer.

Véronique has a particular predisposition towards integrating new textures during the process of creation, in order to convey depth and different dimensions. She had bought different types of fabrics from the famous Swiss haute couture shop, Jakob Schlaepfer in order to integrate them in her paintings.

The two women silhouettes on her painting are the result of a hazard, while she was struggling to paint the background. She wasn’t happy with the result, it was rather a chaotic experience and the next day, once the paint had properly dried, two human shapes arose from the background, as if the paint had been in need of time, in order to process the forms and thus undergone a mysterious transfiguration. The two human shapes are two women, mother and daughter. They are interchangeable, symbolizing time and the different stages in our lives. On the top of the painting there are fragments of bandages, representing scars of a lifetime. On the face of one of the women there is a mask, as if ironically  prefigurating the pandemic era.

This painting is a celebration of spring. The juxtaposition of the vivid vegetation scenery  and the royal blue sky in the background but also the loose and wide brushstrokes create the illusion of vibrant, almost dancing fragments of the awakening nature. The yellow and gold shine add a hedonistic and rich feeling of joy. The painting is a powerful reflection of new beginnings, of hope and light at the end of the tunnel.

Véronique  is an advocate of spontaneity. Next to her powerful expressionistic side, there is hardly any room for preparations and calculations. She likes to get carried away and see where her brushes and tools lead her, instead of planning ahead. She likes to rediscover and reinvent herself over and over again. This painting was created in 2020 and then recreated in December 2021, when she decided to add some shades of pink around the lake, in order to achieve a softer ambiance. She used rollers and spatula.

For the time being all the featured paintings and many others are being exhibited at a private medical cabinet. There will be a Vernissage in the near future, however no date has been settled yet, due to Covid regulations. Should you be interested in purchasing one of her paintings or should you like further information concerning future exhibitions, Véronique Gray will gladly answer your questions and requests. (vero@vivamost.com)

About the author:

Orsolya Farkas Miron comes from a bilingual family, Hungarian and Romanian. She has a MA in Intercultural Communication. After teaching English for 7 years in primary and secondary level, she landed in Zurich, where she had the chance to try herself out during several interesting projects. For the time being she is a freelance writer and painter. In 2019 she had an exhibition in Volketswil. She is passionate about digital drawing and acrylic painting. She also organizes a public event for women, once a month. During these events they tackle issues like integration, language courses, job searching opportunities and many other topics that concern minorities in the Swiss society.

• acrylic
• Art
• art therapy
• burnout
• empowerment
• inspiration story
• Jakob Schlaepfer
• Mixed Media
• painting