As a painter, Delphine Courtillot was already interested in nature. The landscape was her favourite subject. When she exchanged paint for clay eight years ago and literally felt the earth, she felt a deep rooted connection with the material.
Working on her ceramic sculptures, Courtillot feels 'grounded' and part of something bigger, beyond the individual human being. Her work makes us aware of the geological processes that take a very long time and proceed so slowly that we are usually unaware of them. This is the domain of 'patient' rocks, bones and fossils. And on a less visible level: algae, fungi and bacteria.
Courtillot feels the echo of all the potters, pottery makers and ceramists who preceded her. Thousands of years of craftsmanship are ingrained and passed down. She surrenders to the material and its legacy and is guided by the hand-held memory, an interaction between clay and gravity. Even the application of glazes is intuitive but follows an unspoken logic. Colours alternate, clump together or are absent which in a way is comparable to the growth of lichens, the first creature to colonise a virgin piece of earth.
Without showing organisms recognisable in her work, Courtillot portrays the biosphere. No identifiable fingerprints or knuckle pits, she shows dynamics of human effort that help shape it so the given and the made melt together. The distinction between culture and nature dissolves.
In addition to her free-standing sculptures, Courtillot has recently started making wall reliefs. Maybe it seems like a step back to her paintings, and yes, landscapes can be recognised in them, the perspective is radically different from before. The maker is no longer a distant observer who touches the surface with her eye.
She - and with her the viewer - is part of the landscape, sitting among the mosses, unicellular plants, roots and crystals. This is living in another layer of consciousness.