ABOUT THE ARTIST

Benedicte didn’t know that she has feelings so she experienced them through horses.

France based and internationally spread, Benedicte Gelé paints horses with expressiveness and emotions. Born in 1975 in the Parisian suburb, she’d never had connection with horses until she started to ride them at the age of 15. In parallel, school was at best the place where she could draw horses on the sidelines of her notebooks, with her head more in the clouds than focused on the teachers' words.

She became a graphic designer without stopping her research in the arts. Her curiosity and her desire to improve her skill, pushed her into learning by herself the different techniques like oil or watercolor. She started to paint landscapes with first success in regional exhibitions with some first prizes.

In 2004, her job as an art director ended as she became pregnant. This time of unemployment was undeniably a sign for her to start something else. Gelé became graphic designer and artist freelancer. On the horse side, she never failed to take time during the weekends with her mare she’d bought with the help of her parents and summer jobs when she was 18 years old. This first mare played a major role in her life without knowing it at the time.

Benedicte Gelé learned a lot from her, watching her expressions, attitudes and behaviors. Aware of the animal welfare, she looked for ways to always communicate and interact better with them. No wonder that she developed a keen sense of expressing their emotions.

After landscapes, she naturally came to paint horses with a little help from her husband who was at the base of this choice. Year after year, she became more artist than graphic designer letting a big part of her art express the natural emotional state of this animal and by extension, her own.