Patricia Lollia’s stand received many visits during the 10th edition of the Pool Art Fair Guadeloupe which took place from June 14 to 16 in Pointe-à-Pitre. Guadeloupean artist presented, among other things, beautiful works of art made out of driftwood and plant roots.
At the opening of the Pool Art Fair Guadeloupe held last Thursday, June 13, we were immediately attracted by the original works presented by Patricia Lollia. This Saturday, June 15, in the afternoon, we went again to her stand where was also his husband Alex Lollia, the former well-known trade unionist and professor of philosophy in high school who had come to encourage her on the occasion of her first participation in this great cultural event, it was also the first time she showed her work to the audience. Despite the constant flow of visitors who wanted to see the creations and photograph them, greet and talk a few minutes to Guadeloupean artist, we managed to spend nearly an hour with her.
For this exhibition-sale, the artist had named his stand “Nature and Artistic Creation”. Our first observation was, according to Patricia Lollia, the pieces of wood and roots that many of us would be ready to put at the waste collection centre are worth gold. Thanks to her overactive imagination, the visual artist manages to sublimate them and give them a new life in our living-rooms. “I picked up the smallest pieces of driftwood (and a coral with natural purple hues) that allowed me to create these works on La Datcha beach in Le Gosier after Hurricane Maria. The biggest pieces of wood, I found them in Saint-Félix, in the town of Le Gosier too. Some roots come from my garden. The element gives you the subject. Through his imagination, his creativity the artist does not only see a ordinary piece of wood, he will see something else, a masterpiece”, she explained.
Works of art and stories
To give life to her pieces of wood, the artist added artificial eyes, sometimes coconut as a head, “Blazing Tree” seed pods as shoes, twigs or pieces of string as hair, nails, a hat etc.
She did not have any special processing to do to prepare the driftwood and roots, they were painted with acrylic paint. It took Patricia Lollia three months to build this collection of forty pieces.
The animal world with the head of a giraffe or a snake, the creatures of our tales and legends like the “Mofwazé”, the “Bèt a Man Ibè” or “La Diablesse”, as well as Man as “Homo Erectus”, “The Black Diva” or the four dancers of the gwoka rhythms were part of the themes of inspiration of the visual artist.
Then Patricia Lollia named her creations: “My daughter told me that I had to find names and tell a story for each one of them. At first I did not see the need because I was producing but I took a lot of pleasure in writing these stories and I carried out research into our stories and legends”, she said.
Before joining the “artistic community” recently, Patricia Lollia was an educational psychologist in Guadeloupe, she has been retired for five years.
Nearly 2 years in the art world
In November 2017, while she was in a flat in Paris, she began to draw and paint to occupy her time. “Before, I was like many people, I went – especially when I traveled – to museums, galleries to know the style of the artists. I had the opportunity to visit the Picasso Museum because I really like this painter who is part of my sources of inspiration with Jean-Michel Basquiat, Michel Rovelas and his painting “La Huelga”, Michèle Chomereau-Lamotte, Joël Nankin as well as the painters from Haitian naive art…”, she told.
In her stand, the artist also presented a work consisting of eleven paintings with several portraits of women dressed in wax and sometimes wearing pearl necklaces inspired by the famous Spanish painter Pablo Picasso who painted many women in his life: “when we see its title – “Complot” (Plot) – we think that these women are gathered for a negative purpose but in reality they are setting up the world women’s organization”, she explained.
After this first participation in the Pool Art Fair Guadeloupe, it is clear that Patricia Lollia, the self-taught artist, has more self-confidence and that she will continue to create and show her works here and elsewhere. “Guadeloupe is a beautiful country unfortunately we do not know how to protect it, we have a generous nature, we must highlight it this is what I am doing through recycling”, the artist said.
