‘My hands really help me think’
Interview with Charlotte Beaudry
The Artist at your Fingertips
Already in the car, we’re enjoying a unique warm-up. Throughout the 2.5 kilometres of the Annie Cordy Tunnel in Brussels, we’re accompanied by work from the artist. Since 2022, this former Leopold II Tunnel has transformed into a sweeping art gallery, lined with Beaudry's striking portraits of 30 young women. Their powerful personalities spill from the walls, confronting us head-on in one direction and facing away in the other. Beaudry aptly calls her expansive tunnel fresco 'Stand Up', a rallying cry for women of all identities to claim public space without fear.
She tidied up her studio in Ixelles before our visit, still fresh from a party just days earlier to present her Livre à colorier sur la terrasse. The colouring pages in this small publication are far from what you’d expect from a typical 'colouring book'. Among other things, Charlotte sketched cigarette labyrinths, crushed cigarette butts nestled in bottle caps, a packet of rolling tobacco, and a woman’s face with a cigarette dangling from the corner of her mouth. The artist’s humour is unmistakable, woven into both her work and her mannerisms. She has a knack for surprise and for gentle incongruity—a touch of the subversive, but never with an angry middle finger. Sometimes, all you need is a (raised) cigarette to make a point.
Where does the hand stop, where does the cigarette begin? In our conversation, as in the painting with the hand and the cigarette above, the two topics will almost naturally merge. After we looked around in her studio for a while, she suddenly digs something out of her pocket and puts it into our hands. Cigarette butts! Though your eyes could deceive you. They are made of porcelain.
Obsession
On the night of the party, she had scattered them in the courtyard in front of her studio. The guests, being neat people, entered indignantly, wondering “who emptied their ashtray in front of the door?''
She creates her small porcelain sculptures in between painting sessions. The cigarette butts are connected to a series of paintings she fittingly titled 'Obsession.' When she quit smoking, she threw herself into painting cigarette butts. She says that for a period of two months, she did nothing else: “I used to interrupt painting to light a cigarette and have a look. But this time, I told myself: just keep painting. They are a bit crazy, but they made me laugh and that got me over the cape of quitting smoking. I‘ve always been addicted to painting. One obsession gave way to another.”
When looking at the large canvases (in the background above), you might not immediately realize what you see. From a distance, the cigarettes create irregular patterns that seem to be in motion. Her work straddles the line between figurative and abstract art. "It was a challenge not to fall into repetition," she explains. "Each painting references the history of abstract painting, without relying on concrete examples as a starting point."
On a 'marble' table, she has arranged several ashtrays full of cigarette butts as well as some other porcelain objects related to the theme of hands. The table top is not really marble, it has a wooden surface on which she painted trompe l'oeil stickers, showcasing the skills she acquired during her unconventional apprenticeship. Instead of pursuing higher art education, she spent a year in London at the age of 19, apprenticing with her brother Pierre, who worked there as a decorator. Through this hands-on experience, she mastered a wide variety of decorative techniques, including faux marbre, fresco or trompe l'oeil. Her unusual career-path has led to a distinctive approach to painting.
She picks up a small porcelain sculpture in progress featuring double fingers. “It’s like a little character, conveying something about pleasure, painting, hands, and fingers—much like playing music,” she explains. The piece also recalls her fascinating series of paintings in which fingers hover suggestively against a black background. Straight fingers, crooked fingers, beckoning, pointing, scratching, tickling (probably also tapping the ashes of a cigarette). The fingers are detached from the hand, with no context provided. This openness invites a range of interpretations.
She emphasizes that everything she does outside of painting is still connected to her painting practice. She creates her small objects using recovered materials from her sister's ceramics studio, which always has leftovers when she organizes workshops. This is also how she made ‘osselets’ (jacks, bone pieces), which she often played with as a child. With impressive speed and dexterity, she demonstrates how to zip the pieces off the ground and catch them on the back of your hand."
How important are her hands for her work?
“My hands are an extension of my brain; they execute what I think. They are tools, much like a paintbrush. They really help me think.”
She uses her hands frequently when she talks and to greet others. “I prefer shaking hands to kissing; I find it more friendly, open-hearted, and generous. When I was a child back home we never kissed. I had a large family—14 brothers and sisters. We always said ‘yep’ or ‘hi.’ I love that gesture.”
She points to yet another hand gesture in one of her paintings titled "Sister." A teenage girl dressed in red, with slightly spread legs, stretches her finger as if it were a male member. A much larger version of this canvas can be seen in public spaces in Liège. “She marks her territory with her finger,” says Charlotte. "Since most public space is dedicated to men, whenever I get to do a public project, I dedicate it to women. It's an opportunity to raise the bar."
Handy Questions
Your favourite hands in life?
Charlotte Beaudry: "The hands of everyone in my family: my parents, my 14 siblings, their children and grandchildren. Especially my mother’s hands. They were very large hands, marked with prominent age spots—I remember them well. They fascinated me even as a child.
When Marc, my partner, passed away on January 10, 2020, I took some porcelain clay and rolled it into little balls. I asked all his family to press them in their hands, then had them baked and put them on his grave."
I also photographed the hands of my own siblings and my extended family. I believe the lines of the hand are very important. I won’t claim they reveal more than a portrait, but still, you can see a whole life in the palm of a hand.
My own hands are quite damaged because I don’t pay much attention to them. I get hand cream surprisingly often for my birthday, but, actually, I like them this way."
Your favourite hands in art?
Charlotte Beaudry: "I was thinking of pianist Glenn Gould’s hands. He paid close attention to them; they were precious. He even played with mittens to keep them warm and protected. He once said something like, ‘I don’t play with my hands, I play with my mind.’ I love that statement. He saw his hands as an extension of his mind. I think the same applies to painting. Gould played almost everything by heart, with such a strong memory that he rarely needed to rehearse. Still, he exercised with his hands.
I also admire Louise Bourgeois’ angular hands—they’re striking, even in her work. Especially The Welcoming Hands (a group of five bronze sculptures representing intertwined hands, modelled on her own, installed in 2000 at the Tuileries in Paris). I find that piece deeply symbolic, for France and beyond. You can sense the suffering, vulnerability, and welcome in it."
Your best-remembered film scene involving hands?
Charlotte Beaudry: "There’s a film with Catherine Deneuve—my favourite actress, by the way—called Elle s’en va (On My Way). She plays a woman who runs a small restaurant, and her lover leaves her. At one point, she wants to quit her job. She gets in her car, searching for her cigarettes, but can’t find them. So, she gets out and rings a random doorbell. An old man answers, and he starts rolling a cigarette for her while they’re both sitting at his table. And then—this is what I love—it just drags on and on, and he still doesn’t succeed. He talks a bit about his life, and she feels quite uncomfortable. The scene is sad and funny at the same time.”
A book or a nice story with hands?
Charlotte Beaudry: “A book I remember is about a girl describing her father as he smokes, lighting a second cigarette at the same time. I’m not sure why I keep linking cigarettes and hands. It’s probably because I quit smoking and it’s an obsession. Like painting, it's always in my head.”
Your favourite quote about hands?
Charlotte Beaudry: "I could quote Glenn Gould again: 'Not with the hands, but with the mind'—if that’s even a real quote. And Agnes Varda: 'Hands are the painter's tools.'"
Your favourite hand gesture?
Charlotte Beaudry: "I really like the gesture of giving, of passing something on, even if it feels a bit frightening—like the cigarette butts just now. Except I’m not really passing something on, because they’re sculptures. It’s a gesture full of humour. We’re not going to hurt ourselves with these cigarettes. I’ve been doing this for a long time; I walk around with little porcelain objects in my pockets that I give away. I also have ones with a smiley face, one side smiling and the other not, or with the words ‘go’ or ‘stay’—a bit like heads or tails. If you have a difficult decision to make and don’t know how to approach it, you can use those. It’s a way of downplaying an important choice; it’s fun."
What you like doing most with your hands?
Charlotte Beaudry: "Besides painting, I like whistling with one or two fingers."
Something important that you have a good grip on?
Charlotte Beaudry: “Brushes. Like drummers, I enjoy twisting them around my fingers. I have a fetish-like relationship with my brushes, and I keep a small collection."
The characteristics of your handwriting?
Charlotte Beaudry: "It's a bit complicated because I'm dyslexic. I don’t think I ever write the same way twice. Sometimes my writing slants; other times, it’s round, like at school. Sometimes the strokes are thick, sometimes thin. It depends on who I’m writing to. Every year, I send New Year cards, and I write very differently to my brothers and sisters than to people I don’t know very well. With the latter, my handwriting becomes stiffer. I also try to connect all the letters. That's something my mother always told me: never lift your hand. I write every word in one continuous stroke.'
Worst thing that ever happened to your hands?
Charlotte Beaudry: "I was told that I once got my finger caught in a door, but I don’t even remember it. I have a crooked finger. It’s the same finger I used to put in my mouth when I was little. I must have deformed it by doing that."
Something you have painted directly with your hands or fingers?
Charlotte Beaudry: “When I paint, I often use my fingers, for example to erase or flatten areas, to soften colours and create shadows. It’s just as effective as using a brush. But pure finger painting? No, I don't think I’ve ever done that. I do make objects with my hands, of course.”
The things you draw freehand?
Charlotte Beaudry: “In fact, I’ve discovered that I always get my drawings right with paint, the paint helps me see more clearly. When I draw, I don't get the proportions right. I almost always use a projector. The portraits for the Annie Cordy tunnel were done in my studio in the exact format of the tunnel panels (200X114cm). I used a projector to draw the outlines and keep the proportions right. The rest of the work was done freehand. They are done in Indian ink, which I used in the same way as I do with paint - I'm much better with paint.”
Things you would like a helping hand with?
Charlotte Beaudry: “For example, when I feel desperate, I wish people would come knocking on my door to applaud me—that would give me courage. This is especially true when I paint faces. A single brushstroke can transform a face completely, sometimes even making it unrecognizable. It can be quite dispiriting at times.”
Something you like to have on hand when you work?
Charlotte Beaudry: “Colour, every colour needed to paint. I don't prepare just one colour or another, I want them all at hand. I put my palette on the floor because I like that painting also has a physical aspect. Sometimes I mix colours directly on the floor instead of using a palette, which can lead to dramatic scenes with colours scattered everywhere. That's why I always paint the floor white.”
If you could switch your hands with those of another artist, who would it be?
Charlotte Beaudry: “One of my brothers, Olivier, is a cabinetmaker. Recently I spent two days in his workshop when I asked him to craft a box for an edition. Then I said to myself: if I had to choose another job in my life, it would be this.”
Which living artists would you like to touch the hand of?
Charlotte Beaudry: "I don't know if I'm such a fan of any artist that I would want to do that. I have a name in mind, but it brings us back to cigarettes. Sarah Lucas, an English artist. However, my choice has nothing to do with her work on cigarettes. I love her work in general, her whole universe.”
Which heroes or heroines from art history do you spontaneously clap your hands for?
Charlotte Beaudry: "I want to applaud Adèle Haenel, the actress who stood up during the 2020 Césars awards ceremony to protest the prize awarded to Roman Polanski, who has been accused of rape by several women. This act has been repeated by other actresses, marking the beginning of a movement: 'On se lève, on se casse' ('Get up and leave'). What appeals to me in this is that these people have courage, they come out for their opinions during ceremonial meetings where everyone keeps up appearances, where no one reacts to things that are not fair.
And Corinne Masiero also gets my support. She is the actress who stepped naked on stage during the 2021 Césars to denounce the plight of artists during lockdown. She is over 50 years old. And of course she was heavily criticised for her looks, with some calling her 'ugly to boot'. There were popular French actors in the audience who dismissed her performance as ridiculous. And I thought: why don't they get naked next to her instead of mocking her? To me, her gesture was absolutely heroic,—something I personally could never do."
Something you don't want to get your hands dirty on as an artist?
Charlotte Beaudry: "I agree with most other artists' answer to this question: I don't create my work to sell. For example, if someone expresses interest in purchasing a piece that is part of a larger work, I decline. It belongs together. I cannot renounce my own work to please others. I also don't work on commission. When I started making the paintings with cigarettes, a friend who knows the art scene well came over. She looked at them and said, "Unsellable". But that didn't stop me. Not because I wanted to be contrarian, but because I wanted to make them. They may indeed be unsellable, but I don't care.”
Do you keep an ace in hand to conclude? A last thought?
Charlotte Beaudry: "I love children's games from the old days, like the “osselets” game (“jacks”) and arm wrestling, which is a contest to see who is the strongest. It's pointless, but we often played it when I was little.”