Danielle gets her first encounter with painting when she is barely 5-years-old thanks to one of her parents’ friends, the artist Pol Malan who introduces her to his art. Until she turns 15, she dedicates all of her leisurely time to painting. She learns how to play with colors, following such masters as Delacroix, Renoir, or Monet among others.

 

However, those were other times: painting was not considered a “real” occupation then, especially for a woman, and Danielle has to renounce her dream of becoming a painting artist, at least temporarily. She then picks up fashion as a field to express her creativity and sense of style. She launches her own business at only 22, but keeps on painting on the side.

In 1979, her artistic flame rekindles. She moves to Cavaillon, Southern France. There, she finds her inspiration in the traditional Provence villages. She becomes a member of Quat’Z’Arts et Métiers in 1988 and joins the Association of Independent Artists in 1992. A long personal introspective quest follows that nourishes her style and steers her figurative expression towards fantasy.

 

In 2003, she meets with the artist Zao Wou-Ki. This encounter has a tremendous and long-lasting impact on her painting. The following year, her work enters the Dictionnaire de Cotation des Artistes (official rating of painting artists). During her trip to Barcelona, Spain, Gaudi’s modernism captivates her imagination. Danielle pays tribute to the master in her subsequent paintings. Following her discovery of South America in 2011, her color use becomes more vivid. The same year, her work is officially quoted by Christian Sorriano, a renown expert in contemporary art.

Finally, Danielle’s encounter with Wang Yan Cheng during an exhibition in Lyon, France, in 2012, proves a turning point in her approach to painting. The pictorial sensitivity of the artist fascinates her. She finds in it a new source of inspiration that is embedded in her most recent work.