Fresh impressions of the French landscape with Agathe Meunier

Vast outdoor settings, bold forms, and unexpected colours combine to give French illustrator Agathe Meunier a style entirely her own. The stillness of the settings juxtaposed with the energy of the palettes she deploys—along with an abundance of speckled textures—give her work a feel that is natural yet unnatural.

"I like to draw landscapes that I encounter by reinventing the palette of colours in unexpected ways. I work on small areas as though I'm colouring a large page. My practice evolves with each walk or cycle ride I take," explains Agathe.

There's no need to ask what inspires her. The great outdoors, the beauty of nature and landscapes from all over France form the content of each series Agathe creates. It all goes back to her youth when she went on a cycling trip with a friend who introduced her to sketching. Since then, she has sought opportunities to stay in different parts of the country, photographing and drawing her surroundings.

"I went to work at a mountain refuge at Vanoise National Park in the Alps, at the bottom of a magnificent valley, which inspired me a lot. I started drawing and didn't stop," she says. "I've been returning there every summer for four years, and each hike inspires me."

She continues: "Living for a year by the sea made me want to draw the Breton coasts, challenging myself with landscapes I'd never drawn before. A summer residency in Haute-Marne inspired me to work on that region's rural and agricultural landscapes."

The striking forms of the boulders at Côte de Granit Rose in Brittany put Agathe's images of this area among the most memorable in her portfolio. This unique look and feel comes about not just through her drawing and compositional skills but is shaped by the risograph printing technique she uses. "I draw with alcohol markers from photos from my walks; then I have fun recording the colours in the image when preparing the files for riso printing. I often see the purpose of the image only once I've created the print," she says.

Purchasing a risograph printer with Camille le Clainche, Agathe co-founded Dynamo Studio, a microprinting company. Camille and Agathe work together on exhibitions, workshops, and small editions and take up residencies in various locations to create images of the area.

For example, Parcelles is an edition of small format images Agathe created while in Haute-Marne. "It's inspired by the small boxes of souvenir photographs from the 1950s that I found by chance at the flea market," she explains.

Collaborating with the clothing shop Bisart, she has adapted one of her images to become a printed patch to be sewn onto second-hand garments, creating something new. To do so, she adapted the colours and framing of an image from Trégastel to suit screen printing. This new version deviates from her original drawing and the risoprint she created of the location.

She has even worked with a Canevas Fatal to create an embroidery pack enabling cross-stitchers to take inspiration from her work. "The constraints of the fabric made the creative process interesting and unusual," she says. "We had to think about the fineness of the canvas and the restriction of colours so that there were not too many different threads. I was happy to receive my kit to embroider it!"

Trained at the Duperré school in Paris and then the Haute École des Arts du Rhin in Strasbourg, she has remained in eastern France, working as a freelance illustrator while pursuing her own individual projects. In the future, Agathe plans to illustrate a children's book and is currently working with the author on the project's research phase.