Jacqueline CHESTA graduated in English at La Sorbonne Paris IV and got a diploma in International Relations from Sciences Po Paris before obtaining a Fulbright scholarship to study Newspaper journalism at Syracuse University, New York.
Throughout Jacqueline CHESTA’s varied career in journalism, arts and cultural management she has also enjoyed a selection of acting roles in stage and cinema, and has cultivated a parallel career as an award winning painter.
She studied art and living model at the Place des Vosges Public Art School in Paris.
She then spent 10 years practising water colour and its techniques at Jean Louis Morelle‘s studio in Montreuil. She has been refining wet on wet watercolour technique in her landscapes, still lives and popular genre scenes such as cafés and meeting places where people are happy to socialize.
PARISIAN « AT ART »
2006 she started drawing sketches of people on the Metro and the RER in Paris. Croquis sur toile (sketches on canvas) is a series of oil paintings on nonprimed canvas. In May 2010 a selection of 36 sketches was published under the title: La Ligne B. She is a member of Delignes en ligne, a group of artists and draftsmen sketching on the metro. A collective book of drawings, “De lignes en ligne, l’art discret du croquis de métro”, was published by Eyrolles in October 2015. An exhibition was then held at RATP (Paris public transportation company) premises.
Then there was Paris Dessus Dessous, a duo show with the photographer Amadou Gaye at La Médiathèque de Fontenay-aux-Roses in March 2012. Through vigorously brushed sketches, Jacqueline Chesta magnifies the daily routine of all sorts of underground passengers in a cheerful and appealing manner. In the same way, in June 2014, her solo exhibition, CroquenRame, at the Paris Mairie du 7ème arrondissement, expresses a lively outlook on public transport.
Since 2012, while still sketching on the metro, she has now been drawing people everywhere in cities. That started another series entitled “the soul of cities” , oil paintings with collages, mixing art, poetry and literature. She will be showing this series in the Invalides, Paris in Spring 2021.
In February 2018 she was selected by the Salon du Dessin et de la Peinture à l’Eau, to exhibit one large painting on paper at Art Capital, in the Grand Palais in Paris. She took part in Art Capital again in 2019. In April 2019 she had a personal show in Japan entitled « The Parisian Scene » in Galerie NumArt, in Fujisawa-Kanagawa near Tokyo. (www.numart.jp). Her large Parisian paintings were shown in the Invalides and at The Hôpital Corentin Celton in Issy-les-Moulineaux in 2019. She is currently working on a new series of acrylic and oil paintings called Les Regardeurs (The Onlookers), about our attitudes at museum exhibitions. In June 2020 after 55 days of lockdown in France due to the covid-19 pandemic, she published Cahier du Confinement, a lockdown artist daily notebook with watercolours and texts conveying her emotions at such an unprecedented world situation. It sold out immediately.
An active member of the Montparnasse Artists Market in Paris, and of several other painters’ societies, she has shown her work regularly since 1996. A number of her artwork, including prize-winning paintings, has been acquired by collectors from all over the world.
Jacqueline Chesta lives and works in the Paris area.
Jacqueline CHESTA 