City Gardeners, Portraits Sketched On The Spot

RBB : Couverture du livre Jardiniers des villes

The book “City Gardeners, Portraits Sketched On The Spot” (Jardiniers des villes, portraits croqués sur le vif) was inspired by fifty-four sketched portraits of city gardeners filled by vegetable anecdotes, short and poetic texts. Each garden has its own character: either orderly, bucolic, ecological, beginner or, experienced. Through her words and brushstrokes, Raphaèle Bernard-Bacot captures the present moment of the garden, while presenting the richness and diversity of plants. She also highlights the cultivation techniques of the gardeners, reconnecting with ancestral practices, learning about permaculture, and sharing traditions from elsewhere. Whether the urban garden is a place of refuge, or a place of meeting and “doing things together,” the garden remains a unique space for exploring the link between humankind and the earth, even in the city.

City Gardeners, Portraits Sketched On The Spot
Publisher: Rue de l’Échiquier, June 2020
Price: 24.90 euros
Format: 220 x 300 mm
Number of pages: 128
Hardcover

 

Travel sketchbooks

When travelling, Raphaèle Bernard-Bacot swaps her camera for her sketchbook.
She records her first impressions with a pen and watercolors.

Each region and country offers surprises which make them so attractive; the cheerful Chinese rural inhabitants, the beauty of Indian women, or the Mediterranean charm of Greece. The common links between all the places are her interest in the vegetable gardens and cultivation of fruits all over the world.

Her sketchbooks are the sources from which she creates her larger scales artwork such as her painting exhibited in Shangjin’s Museum in China.

 

China – 2018

 

Greece (Milos) – 2015

 

South India – 2014

 

Landscapes: gouaches on paper

Since her childhood, Raphaèle Bernard-Bacot has painted landscapes outdoors, in addition to her studio work. In France (Brittany, Sarthe, Normandy, the South and the Paris region) or further afield in places such as Morocco, Scotland or India, she always works on site in order to share her enthusiasm for the beauty of natural sites. Her approach is highly color-oriented which highlights the subtleties of her gouache* technique.

  • opaque water color

The Royal Vegetable Garden sketchbook

Le Potager du Roi

These drawings from her garden diary inspired the book “The King’s Vegetable Garden, Drawings of The Seasons in Versailles”(Le Potager du Roi, dessins de saisons à Versailles), published by Glénat in April 2017.
For three years, Raphaèle Bernard-Bacot sketches the ephemeral colors of the morning harvest. She also notes the moods and the vegetable activities of the day, that the gardeners of the King’s Vegetable Garden share with her throughout the seasons.
This book was produced in collaboration with the National School of Landscape and, the King’s Vegetable Garden in Versailles.

The King’s Vegetable Garden, Drawings of The Seasons in Versailles
Publisher: Glénat, April 2017
Price: 15.00 euros
Format: 155 x 218 mm
Number of pages: 96
Hardcover