French artist Anaïs Boileau (b. 1992) was raised under the blue skies and strong sun of the south of France, among the vineyards of the garrigue near the Roman city of Nîmes.

By reframing and recreating the landscape and the objects that she finds in her native land, she looks to create “moments of joy” through her work – a space for us to breathe in a world that can so often feel heavy.

“My work is about going back to something very simple, very present”

Her focus is on colour, light, shape and form, as she plays and experiments at the boundaries between abstraction and reality, painting and photography, using the outdoors and the dark shadows of the bright midday sun as her creative studio.

Her first, award-winning series, Plein Soleil (2014), features majestic portraits of sun-worshipping women on the beaches of the Mediterranean, shot in the same style as the local architecture. The colours are vibrant. The light stark. And the geometric shapes softened by the tangly vegetation.

La Grande Motte (2019) is the start of her experiment with collage. Here, she mixes cut-outs of her own and archive images, with digital brushwork to re-render the geometric forms and pyramidal structures of the architecture of the futuristic-looking seaside resort of La Grande-Motte into a new exotic universe.

“My process is to experiment, to build, to create – and to create something attractive”

For her series Soleil Brûlant (2022), which she produced at the family farmhouse over the pandemic lockdowns, she collected and salvaged paper, plants, fabrics and materials, objects long forgotten in the loft, or found in the garden, to, in a different way, play and explore with colour, light, shape and form.

From this more figurative work emerged her latest ongoing series, where she uses brushwork (pastels, paint and China ink) directly on her prints to create unique pieces – organic, almost floral works of the imagination.

Anaïs lives between Paris and Nîmes, alternating between her artistic projects and photographic commissions for the likes of Le Monde, M magazine, The Wall Street Journal and The Financial Times. She also works with brands including Hermès, and LVMH for their Journées Particulières, showcasing the diversity of métier and savoir-faire at LVMH Maisons.

She studied photography at the Lausanne art school ECAL (graduating 2014) and at Central Saint Martins in London (2017).

She is part of Futures, the Europe-based photography platform, having been nominated by the Centre Photographique Rouen Normandie in 2022.