Nathalie Du Pasquier was born in Bordeaux, France in 1957. She travelled in Africa in her late teens and, on returning to France, started to explore the visual culture there and to make images. She settled in Italy in 1978 and her focus shifted toward design. In Milan a group gathered around the architect Ettore Sottsass in 1981, Nathalie was among them, and the seminal design team Memphis was born. After the group dissolved in 1987, Nathalie began to paint again and exhibit her work.

Nathalie has exhibited in Hong Kong since 1988 and the ancient tradition of Chinese Painting, which is about a meditative space between the painter and the the viewer, interests her particularly. She is not trying mirror Chinese Painting but to create a similar dialogue while working within the European tradition of Still Life. In 1998 she moved to a vast, well-lit studio which brought about significant changes in her work. The scale of the paintings increased, colour was used more sparingly, fewer elements feature and they are therefore less narrative. As a painter her subject is broadly described as ‘still-life’, featuring over-sized domestic objects, abstract sculptures, and semi-industrial components lately containing three-dimensional elements or incorporated into installations.

“The contemplative nature of the still-life painters gaze is able to surprise, intrigue and mesmerise the viewer with the normally unperceived visual qualities of familiar objects, and things which in the world of lived experience, are taken for granted, can be transfigured in paintings worthy of our admiration” Dr. Peter Cherry, Trinity College Dublin.

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