I’m an illustrator and graphic designer. I have two daughters, Ava, who’s six and a half, and Rivka, who’s one. I studied applied arts, and after that, I worked with another graphic designer for a few years before continuing my career on my own, which is what I’ve done since the birth of my first daughter in 2017. I drew and painted throughout my childhood, and I missed it during the first years of my career. So I found a way, you might say, of reintegrating it into my day-to-day practice, initially through designing motifs. I worked for makers, fashion brands and interior designers. I wanted to create even stronger identities for them by offering them the opportunity to insert drawings or create original motifs for collections or colour schemes for specific projects. And it caught on very quickly. I’m thinking of Johanna Senyk, whom I met when she started her first label, Wanda Nylon and who then asked me to design the prints for her Françoise collection. I also design a fair few artistic coffee table books, exhibition catalogues, artists’ monographs, and typefaces.

In 2019, Gallimard asked me to design the artwork for the illustrated reissue of À Rebours, the novel by Joris-Karl Huysmans, published to coincide with the Joris-Karl Huysmans critique d’art exhibition, curated by Stéphane Guégan and André Guyaux and co-produced with the Musée d’Orsay. It’s a novel that’s been significant for me for a long time, and I was absolutely delighted. In an attempt to convey the highly atmospheric spirit of the book, the heady, highly charged world meticulously conceived by Des Esseintes (the main character), I suggested making the iconography denser by drawing faux marbled, voluptuous, psychedelic papers for the covers and chapter headings. The chapter openers (Nostra,  by Lucas Descroix) are also almost more a matter of drawing than typography. It was a unique opportunity to incorporate my designs into a book – I’d never allow myself to do that in an artist’s monograph, for example! Drawing quickly became a practice in its own right and now occupies more than half of my working time. I create patterns for wallpapers and textiles and design panoramic backdrops for architects, among others. At the moment, I’m illustrating all the posters for the Opéra National du Rhin (Strasbourg Opera) in collaboration with Twice Studio, who are creating the visual identity for next season.

It’s always complex when you’re up to your neck in it every day, and you’re constantly discovering things… Thinking about it, I keep coming back to Félix Vallotton’s Symbolist landscapes. In fact, they certainly influenced the tapestry I designed for The Socialite Family. I love his landscapes with their hallucinatory colours like those Ernst Ludwig Kirchner used, and I’m sure they’ve had a significant influence on generations of artists. The Nabis and the Fauves also influenced me a great deal through their search for colour and the movement of shapes. In the tapestry, we also find something of the colours Bernard Neville used in his 1970s designs for Liberty, which I often look at. But I love so many other things: decadence, the bizarre, the macabre, horror, a degree of bad taste, too… The atmosphere of the Biba shop in London in the 70s, the colours of Fantasia, Mike Kelley, Mario Bava, Dario Argento in Suspiria and Inferno, all those influences of saturated colours on a black background, strange and impossible, negative… I keep coming back to it. And then, with colour, in my opinion, you always have to go for it, “Try Bad Taste”, said Ballard in Millenium People, even when you think you’re going backwards. I saw these sky blue curtains from The Socialite Family, and it was obvious they belonged here, even though it’s a colour I wouldn’t usually go for. But when I don’t like a colour, I try to think about what’s interesting about it and what other colour or texture could bring it out. And I always end up finding it.

I spent a good part of my childhood in houses filled with pictures, wallpaper and, above all, books. It certainly fuelled my interest in images… As does my boredom! I’ve always read a lot. I first discovered art in books rather than in museums. Which is undoubtedly the origin of my obsession with the book as an object. That said, now I come to think about it, my father passed his taste for fantasy, science fiction and futurology to me. Poe, Maupassant, Lovecraft, Philipp K. Dick, and J.G. Ballard, among many others, have been long-term obsessions! Many of my drawings are named after Ballard’s short stories… I also remember pinching lots of paperbacks with dated covers from my grandfather. He died quite early in my youth when I was a child. When I went to visit my grandmother, I slept in his old study. I started quietly clearing out his bookshelf a bit at a time. Vienne 1880-1838, the Apocalypse Joyeuse comes from that library, for example (laughs). I chose novels purely by their covers. Pierre Faucheux’s 50s pocketbooks (I discovered his designs for club books a little later). And Massin’s Les Folios Gallimard from the 70s, with the titles in Baskerville font and the illustrated covers. And Alain Le Foll’s for À Rebours (again!), for example. And albums by Harlin Quist and Ruy Vidal.

I designed Il Cielo in una stanza for The Socialite Family. I’ve just finished the catalogue for the Les Fleurs d’Yves Saint Laurent exhibition, which opens at the Musée Yves Saint Laurent in Marrakech and will travel to the Musée Yves Saint Laurent in Paris in September. I created a huge 13-metre panoramic piece for the Fish Point restaurant at Galeries Lafayette Gourmet. And I’m just finishing the catalogue of the Etel Adnan exhibition at the King Abdulaziz Center for World Culture in Ithra, Saudi Arabia, which opened this Sunday. It will be available soon.

Cuisine (50 rue Condorcet, Paris 9), where I love the food, obviously, and the restaurant’s decor by Federico Masotto. Les Petits Mitrons (26 rue Lepic, Paris 18), for the best tarts in Paris, especially their caramelised crust. And Bilili, (136 rue du faubourg Poissonière, Paris 10), because I love the whole menu.