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Claire... like a long sleepless night filling canvas after canvas with slightly peculiar, thought provoking characters. Claire... like the path that one day opened to inhibited emotions of the night and of past wounds. Claire… like an action linking the unconscious to the conscious and awakening to life. "My modest analysis..."

Claire doesn’t meditate what she is going to paint. Margot, Virgil and his dog, or the little girl with prunes call to her from the border with sleep; many women, children as well, sometimes men, whom it is difficult to distinguish from their women colleagues. Claire then captures them as faithfully as possible... A breast that is impertinently hanging out; and a woman seated perfectly seriously, and as always a breast, pinched by her male (or female?) lover with long purple nails; one mocking raised eye that can be seen here or there, between innocence and malice. Claire slips into the cracks; accentuates attitudes without judging, but always with a touch of irony.

In these paintings where the texture of skin seems to fill up all the space and even ‘invade’ the background, sometimes transparent, sometimes sickly pale, sometimes a piercing presence or a noxious sensuality…. Red dominates, oil, glazed with knives and therefore generally very bright. A series of blues as well, where heads can be seen on the surface of a lake of womb water, in a universe that may be either frightening or serene, it is hard to decide which. The faces are clear, outlined; the eyes are watching; but the bodies are growing blurred, faded, or bloated as though they refuse to be a part of the same story, depository of some instinctive memory, speaking for the deep emotions woven into our lives and silently written in our flesh.

Little by little Claire has stopped drawing the ‘mother’ and is discovering young women like herself, appear in her paintings.

A catharsis that is part of a more harmonious acceptation of her interior self, a kind of meditation ever searching for more serenity, a hygiene of life like yoga or dance...

Louise Nanche, ELLE MAGAZINE

Solo Exhibitions

2003 Galerie Doc Compan Paris, France

2001 Galerie R. Banas Metz, France

2000 Galerie Victor Sfez Paris, France

2000 Agence Casari Mercier Nancy, France

1999 24 Gallery Chelsea, New-York City, U.S.A.

1999 Home Gallery Jacksonville, Florida, U.S.A.

1998 Galerie De Centreville Television Paris, France

1998 Galerie Claire Geny Nancy, France

Group Exhibitions

2004 Grant Gallery Soho, New-York City, U.S.A.

2003 Grant Gallery Soho, New-York City, U.S.A.

2003 R.I.P. Festival Off Arles, France

2002 Musee DArt Ancien Et Contemporain DEpinal, France

1999 Galerie Victor Sfez Paris, France

1998 Galerie Victor Sfez Paris, France

1997 Salon Des Artistes Presents, Hotel De Ville Du Bourget Le Bourget, France

1996 Salon International De Sculpture & Peinture, Galerie De LIle De Bandor Marseille, France

Catalogue ІClaire Petit's PaintingsіNovember 2001

March 2002 Review Elle Magazine

November 2004 le Singe Editions de la Maison Close