A graduate from the Saint Luc Institute of Fine Arts in Liege in 1987, the artist followed her studies of painting with training in engraving and lithography, first with Marc Laffineur in Liege, and then at the night classes at the school of art in Verviers with Michel Barzin.

 

         Béatrice Graas has been a member of the group Impression(s)  since 2004.   www.cultureplus.be

 

         Her visual vocabulary is linked to childhood, to the joy of creating, to freedom and to spontaneity. She translates the purity of her universe through vivid, bright colour.

 

          In her paintings we find people, imaginary and familiar animals and a series of graffiti and textual fragments that reveal a child-like aspect.

 

         “The pleasure of spreading out colour with largesse, of inundating the canvas with yellow, blue, green, adding fitting graphic elements that invigorate these large painted expanses.

           Collages and photographs conjured up out of daily life, as it were.

           As if by chance, “foreign bodies” from an unknown place, these cryptic messages.

           Unexpected, surprising, playful, even humorous.

           Deliberately or voluntarily free and light, unconstrained.

          The paradise of a rediscovered childhood?”

                                                                                Pierre Deuse 2007

 

Her engravings are based around images and texts. The contrasts between the colours and the words intensify the artistic message of the artist.

 

From the various techniques of printmaking, she focuses on relief engraving, that is, on linocuts.

 

              “Béatrice Graas unites images and words, a convergence of expressions, in order to attain the themes of her engravings. Explosions of colours, vibrations of letters and friendly animals are assembled so as to evoke the world of the circus or a wild jungle or tame animals and brings the memories of real and imaginary journeys to the fore. An entire menagerie comes along in the wink of a knowing eye. Each linocut has been made from an impression, from a wonder, and transforms itself into an enigma. That which cannot be said thus uses the metaphor of the animal to better capture the fantasies of childhood or to express the sophisticated thoughts of someone now adult. Although it reminds us of our first schoolbook, it reveals an often critical understanding and makes us confront our problems with joy and humour. Viewed as a piece, this is a strong and colourful body of work, and, like its creator, it is both light-hearted and tender”.

                                                                                Louis Simaÿs – Galerie Culture Plus – 2001