A quarrel of love or friendship, a family tearing or a professional hitch have marked their lives … They tell it to the “world”. This week, Emilie, 46, Vannes painter.
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Always my parents denigrate me, despise me. In my family, everyone is prof. My father taught philosophy, which gave him a double authority: that of the Father and that of the “knowing”, with a capital “S”. My mother, she taught French and Latin. As far as I can remember, I always wanted to paint. It’s an aspiration as old as me. From childhood, this taste has disturbed my parents. They quickly cataloged me like the “weird” girl. They spoke to me with condescension. They looked at me like a foreign.
Yet, they opened me to this world: they took me to the museum, made me travel … I bathed in an artistic culture. But, growing up, I realized that they did not think it could be a choice of life. Worse, it contaminated all the vision they had of me. To our friends, our loved ones, they always said, on the tone of humor: “Oh, you know, Emilie, she is weird!” My clothing choices, my teen crisis, my way of thinking, my vocation , everything has been included in this word which expressed their misunderstanding.
Once, at Christmas – I had to be 9 years old – I had made an abstract canvas for my father, with objects of recovery, which I had packed in gift paper and filed under the tree. When he opened it, in front of all my family, he first not understood what it was. I had to explain it to him that it was a painting. There, everyone did not care. My cousins were folded, I was the object of the fun of the moment. There was nothing mean in their intention, it was: “Here you are, still Emilie who does his stuff,” but that hurt me.
Over time, this denigration damaged me, left traces. I did not change the way. I did some studies to please them, but it did not give anything, and I continued to paint. They thought I put myself in financial and social danger. At 20, I told them that I was going to leave on the other end of France, in Vannes. I needed to get away from them. My father retorted me: “If you leave, you are no longer my daughter.” He tried to push me to do a training to become conservative of heritage. I refused, and I left. He no longer addressed the floor for several months, before writing to apologize – an incredible event for this proud man.
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