Julie Schalit
Bio
Julie Schalit was born in 1969 in Paris and now moves between her hometown and the southwest of France.
Her father, an advertising executive, passed on his love for colors and beautiful things. With her mother, in a small village in Dordogne, she grew up close to nature and people.
After traveling and studying communication and graphic design, she held various positions as a graphic designer and art director. In 2005, she decided to launch her own business and founded Les Louisettes, one of the first companies to pioneer the trend of decorative wall stickers, dedicated to her daughter Louise. Her regular participation in the Maison & Objet trade show over several years allowed her to build an international clientele.
Drawing from this experience, in 2012 she chose to focus on illustration under the name Suzie-Q, a nod to an iconic 1950s song and to her second daughter, Suzie. She then began working with an agent and moved to Bordeaux, where she still lives today. Many exciting opportunities followed, including collaborations with brands like Clairefontaine, Exacompta, and La Chaise Longue on stationery and home decor collections, as well as illustrating a book on the female body published by La Musardine.
In 2021, she returned to painting, offering her creativity a new form of expression. Today marks the beginning of her first exhibitions as a visual artist.
Artistic approach
“My artistic practice is deeply rooted in three core values that are close to my heart: spontaneity, freedom, and generosity.
Painting or drawing helps me quiet my mind and let my gestures take the lead.
My universe lies somewhere between abstraction and figuration, between geometry, dreams, and nature. I explore color, contrast, marks, and movement as emotional languages through instinctive gestures and free-form compositions.
I started by working mainly with colored markers and Rotring pens on layout paper.
I would doodle and create floral, graphic patterns that I then staged by ‘dressing up’ celebrities from the 1950s, 60s, and 70s using Photoshop — from Maria Callas to Clint Eastwood and many others.
Then, my focus shifted toward women and their desires, drawing inspiration mainly from 1970s imagery.
Then I tackled the difficult exercise of portraiture, as a challenge: a photo displayed on my phone, a fine black felt-tip pen, a pad of white A4 paper, and an hour timer. For the Atlantic coast landscapes, I drew lines on paper, then scanned and colored them in Photoshop.
Digital technology was taking up too much space, so during lockdown I took up painting, fabric, and Posca pens to create in a different way.
Emotional, sensitive, and in constant inner turmoil, my work reflects this tension between calm and intensity, patience and urgency, contemplation and desire for movement. Each piece is born from a fragile balance between control and letting go, between spontaneity and construction.
