VICKY-MAY GIRAUD

ARTIST BIO

Vicky-May Giraud is a multilingual French/Swedish artist based in Paris. She has exhibited in France and Sweden and most recently at Paris Fashion Air (part of Paris Fashion Week) on 2 - 3 March 2024. She will be exhibiting at the same event in September.

Inspired by a visit to the Sistine Chapel, particularly Michaelangelo's frescoes, she's been painting since the age of 9. Vicky-May returned home and painted the whole of her bedroom. Everything within that room became her canvas: wall, ceiling, bed and beyond.

Vicky-May usually creates using oil, paint, acrylic or charcoal. Recently, she has been using her graphic tablet and Clip Studio Paint (pro software for artists, illustrators, etc) to draw and paint everything from scratch. Her move to a digital format has coincided with a particular moment in her life in which the future is tangible yet distant.

Finally, Vicky-May is also an author with two published books (in Swedish), a video game creator and a scriptwriter in the making.

ARTIST STATEMENT

I am driven by passion and love. Both for people and art. They are at the core of all that I do. But ideas and themes are developing from within this core. As such, I understand how these life themes contribute to my art, and how my biology and chemistry produce a new art.

For example, an earlier project centred on being marked, as in tattooed, in particular internally by love. The prevalence of tattoos in modern culture demonstrates our love of things, yet internally, we rarely see what marks us in the same way. My ‘marked’ series aims to explore this dichotomy. This allowed me to explore the effects of a new personal relationship (a new love), and how that affected how I worked (my move to a digital format coincided with this moment), and how I assimilated love for someone like Toulouse Lautrec in another piece.

My most recent pieces are a collaboration between myself and photographer, Mark Gee. Called ‘You’re ruining my looks’, it explores the concept of beauty (e.g. questioning whose beauty is ruined in the art?) and by extension, the ideas behind make-up and cosmetic surgery masking supposed flaws.

My current focus is on females, but when I was younger, I focused on masculine figures (e.g. Mike Tyson). In the future, I intend to return to depicting male figures, mainly focusing on fighters and what that means in terms of masculinity.