Born into a large family, Florence Salagnac could have been born in the middle of a desert of stones and found there material to sustain herself for a lifetime. If she dreamed of being a witch at the age of 5, it is around 15 that she decided to abandon the magic wand to use her personal gifts. Her astonishing artistic precocity led her first to drawing, then to painting.
Between 1986 and 1988, she attended the artistic workshops of the city of Paris. In 1989, she studied at the Beaux-Arts de Paris, where she immediately fell in love with stone. She joined the Coutelle workshop in 1992, which confirmed her talent as a sculptor, her genius guiding her relentlessly in the accuracy of curves and lines. There, she learned the techniques essential to any apprentice sculptor: modeling, drawing, live model and wax. But what she likes the most is the direct carving of the stone. In the beginning, she tried to make the shapes as real as possible, in search of perfection in detail.
Today, after years of practice, she is no longer interested in detail or in beautiful stones. Her favorite is Burgundy marble: a hard, dense stone with warm colors and a soft texture. Its beige hues are sometimes interspersed with ochre veins. Many of her works represent intertwined characters. The sculptor has been working on the notion of doubling since she discovered Jean-Pierre Garnier-Malet’s theory on the doubling of time.
Since 1994, Florence Salagnac has exhibited her work in about fifteen shows in Paris, Chartres, Lyon and Rambouillet, where she has won numerous prizes. She now has her own studios in Houdan, Gentilly and Boulogne-Billancourt.