Jan van Eyck /  by delphine queme

The Arnolfini Portrait (detail) by Jan van Eyck (1434) - National Gallery, London

Flemish paintings have always been celebrated for the beauty of the details. In the Arnolfini portrait the miror on the wall reflects a whole new scene, probably the painter with another person (his own wife ?). 

In Le prêteur et sa femme (1514)  - Musée du Louvre, it reflects the outside through the window and an extra person which is not present in the painting itself.

These details in mirors remind me of this photograph of the master of photography August Sander. In The right eye of my daughter Sigrid (1928) - Moma, one can see again as in the Quentin Metsys painting a window opening the scene on the outside.

Edward Hopper /  by delphine queme

New York office (1962) by Edward Hopper (Montgomery museum of fine arts)

Edward Hopper is naturally one of my very main inspirations. First his need for emptiness which often occupies a major part of space in his paintings (like in New York office or in Nighthawks), also his need for almost peoplelessness (people are sometimes there, but often lonely, sad, not really alive or moving, like a part of the landscape). I look for emptiness and straight lines in my pictures too. It makes me feel confortable.  The person who offered me my first exhibition talked about the "poésie du vide" that remained in my pictures.

Also about Hopper, recently i went to a Vermeer exhibition and what really stroke me was how Hopper and Vermeer were related. How the light arrives from outside in a scene,  the windows, the interiors, the ordinary people inside their place, their loneliness.