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Martine Jardel
USA
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"I never know where a painting is going when starting."
In her series Non Lieu, meaning Non-Place, Martine Jardel explores spaces that exist somewhere between landscape and memory, presence and absence, abstraction and natural suggestion. These large-scale acrylic paintings do not depict specific locations, and that refusal is deliberate rather than incidental. Instead they evoke places that feel familiar yet remain impossible to identify, territories of sensation, atmosphere, and imagination where forms emerge, dissolve, and reappear in a state of continuous transformation. The title itself signals the paradox at the center of the work, a place that is also a non-place, somewhere recognized by feeling yet unlocatable on any map, and it is within this in-between condition that the entire series takes its meaning and its strange, lingering power.
Non Lieu 1 | Acrylic
$5,000
36 x 60"
Non Lieu 1 was my first acrylic after stepping away from oil paint. Acrylic paint offered new combinations of lights, space, mystery, and complexity that I had yet to see in my oil paintings.
Working intuitively, Jardel begins each painting without a predetermined image or narrative, allowing the act of painting itself to become a process of discovery rather than the execution of a plan. Rapid gestures, layered marks, washes of color, and spontaneous decisions guide the evolution of each work as it moves toward a resolution she does not foresee at the outset. Rather than illustrating an idea fixed in advance, she allows the painting to reveal its own internal logic, following where the surface leads instead of imposing a predetermined destination upon it. This openness to chance and improvisation is central to her practice, and the speed of her execution preserves a sense of immediacy and vitality, capturing moments that might otherwise disappear before they can be fully understood or named.
Non Lieu 8
| Acrylic
$5,000
36 x 60"
New found space and colors.
"Speed lets me catch a sensation before it escapes me entirely."
For Jardel, the physical act of painting is itself a genuine source of pleasure and meaning, not merely a means to an end. She is drawn to the energy of a swift gesture and to the unpredictable dialogue that unfolds between intention and accident, a conversation in which neither party fully dominates the other. Often the most compelling passages emerge unexpectedly, arriving as surprises rather than as the fulfillment of a plan, and her response to these moments defines much of her approach. Rather than correcting or controlling every outcome, she welcomes these unforeseen events and allows them to guide the direction of the work, so that painting becomes less an act of representation than an exploration of possibilities unfolding in real time.
Non Lieu 9 | Acrylic
$5,000
36 x 60"
Density of gestures and colors.
The surfaces of these paintings are built through successive layers of acrylic paint that alternately conceal and reveal what lies beneath, producing a richness that rewards sustained attention. Translucent passages coexist with denser accumulations of pigment, creating a visual depth that invites prolonged observation rather than a single quick reading. Shapes drift in and out of focus across the surface, and traces of earlier gestures remain visible, suggesting histories embedded within the painting like sediment laid down over time. The resulting compositions feel both expansive and intimate at once, as though they contain fragments of remembered landscapes, weather patterns, reflections on water, geological formations, or fleeting impressions gathered from the natural world and held in suspension.
Demonstrates memory of nature.
Non Lieu 12 | Acrylic
$5,000
36 x 60"
"I am drawn to the moment where abstraction begins to suggest a horizon or a river, then slips away again before it can settle into certainty."
"For me the act of painting is itself the pleasure and the meaning, not just a way of arriving somewhere. I begin without a plan and let rapid gestures and layered washes lead me, watching forms emerge, dissolve, and reappear as I work. The most compelling passages almost always arrive unexpectedly, and rather than correcting them I follow where they want to go. Nothing in these paintings is ever fully stable. Everything is becoming, dissolving, reconfiguring, the way memory and perception shift with attention and feeling. I am not trying to depict a place. I am trying to hold a fleeting sensation long enough that someone else can wander into it and complete it with their own."
Non Lieu 13 | Acrylic
$6,000
48 x 60"
Diptych that represents flying colors.
While entirely abstract, the paintings maintain a strong and persistent connection to nature, and this tension between abstraction and natural suggestion is one of their defining qualities. Viewers often recognize echoes of horizons, rivers, clouds, vegetation, mist, or distant terrain within the compositions, yet these references are never literal or deliberately placed. Instead they arise through associations created by color, texture, movement, and spatial relationships, emerging from the formal language of the painting rather than from any intention to depict. Jardel is interested precisely in the point where abstraction begins to suggest something recognizable, only to slip away again before settling into certainty, and this continual approach and withdrawal keeps the work alive.
Non Lieu 14 | Acrylic
$5,000
36 x 60"
Subdued atmosphere.
This very ambiguity allows the paintings to remain open and dynamic, resisting the fixed interpretation that would close them down. A viewer may settle for a moment on the impression of a horizon or the suggestion of water, only to find the reading dissolve as attention shifts and another possibility takes its place. Nothing is pinned in place long enough to become definitive, and this instability is not a flaw to be corrected but the very condition the work seeks to sustain. By refusing to resolve into a single identifiable scene, the paintings stay perpetually in motion, offering themselves to interpretation without ever submitting fully to any one of them.
Balance between marks and color.
Non Lieu 16 | Acrylic
$5,000
36 x 48"
Color plays a fundamental role in shaping the emotional atmosphere of each work, functioning as one of the primary carriers of feeling. Deep blues, luminous whites, earthy ochres, muted greens, and flashes of warmer tones interact in ways that evoke shifting light, changing seasons, or the rhythms of natural phenomena. Rather than describing a particular environment with any precision, these chromatic relationships generate moods and sensations that operate on an intuitive level, beneath the threshold of explicit recognition. The paintings seek to engage perception before language, reaching the viewer through direct sensory response rather than through nameable content, and inviting a personal reaction that precedes any attempt to explain it.
"The accident is not my enemy; it is my collaborator."
Underlying the entire body of work is a sustained interest in impermanence and transformation, a fascination that gives the series its philosophical weight. Nothing within these compositions appears fully stable, and forms are continually becoming, dissolving, and reconfiguring themselves before the eye. This fluidity reflects the artist's fascination with the transient nature of perception and memory, with the way that what is seen is never entirely fixed but changes according to attention, experience, and emotional state. The paintings embrace this uncertainty rather than resisting it, offering spaces where multiple readings can coexist without contradiction, where the act of looking is understood to be itself unstable and continually in flux.
Non Lieu 19 | Acrylic
$5,000
36 x 48"
Forever Blue
For all their atmospheric power, Jardel's Non Lieu paintings do not seek to provide answers or to tell stories, and this restraint is essential to how they function. Instead they create opportunities for contemplation and imaginative projection, opening rather than closing the space of meaning. Each viewer brings personal memories, emotions, and associations to the encounter, completing the work through their own experience, so that no two viewings are ever quite the same. The paintings function as open fields of possibility rather than closed statements, and their generosity lies precisely in this incompleteness, in the room they leave for the person standing before them to enter and to contribute.
Animated sky.
Non Lieu 4 | Acrylic
$5,000
36 x 60"
Ultimately, Martine Jardel's work is less concerned with representing the visible world than with capturing fleeting sensations and states of awareness that ordinarily escape notice. Through gesture, color, layering, and ambiguity, she creates immersive environments that invite viewers to pause, to wander, and to reflect at their own pace. In these non-places, meaning does not reside in a fixed image or a locatable site but emerges instead through the evolving relationship between painting, memory, and perception. It is an art of the threshold and the in-between, one that trusts sensation over statement and finds its fullest expression not in what it depicts but in what it allows each viewer to feel and to imagine.
Non Lieu 20 | Acrylic
$5,000
36 x 60"
Looking for creatures.
"I want recognition to flicker, then vanish before it becomes certain."
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