A French painter of Cameroonian descent, I work in watercolour with a contemporary, sensitive and luminous approach that takes the portrait as its starting point. My works reveal a deeply human and plural presence. They seek to reflect the complexity of our identities and cultures, and the tension between our strengths and our vulnerabilities, through a soft palette, delicate light and close attention to expression.
My work interweaves portraits tinged with surrealism, caskets of secret emotions, with self-representation and the way we shape our own images. My paintings invite an intimate encounter with the gaze of the other and let a wide range of emotions emerge, from tenderness and serenity to more ambiguous, sometimes unsettling feelings.
My contemporary use of traditional watercolour on paper sets material and time in dialogue. Sometimes the ground for a fleeting sketch or spontaneous notes, sometimes for elaborate works, the sheet is a space of freedom. Watercolour paper is heir to cotton and the seasons, and to the water that transforms it and makes it vibrate. Watercolour allows almost no correction: the gesture is immediate. To work in watercolour is to offer the collector the bare expression, the original moment of my creation, in a work where the authenticity of the line comes first and unpredictability is sublimated.
Maeli (Sarah-Maeli Tedo) is an emerging French-Cameroonian painter based in Toulouse, France. After a childhood spent between France and several African countries, following her father's work for NGOs, Maeli earned a Master's degree in Contemporary Art and New Media from Université Paris VIII in 2017. She now pursues her watercolour practice, translating the volatile instant of the digital into material, contemplative works that reflect our contemporary cultural conversations.