All lovers of medieval Manuscripts and religious books will be familiar with ‘illuminations’, those painted letters or miniatures with which they are ornamented. Under de Carpentry’s skilled fingers, illuminations have now taken on a completely new form of life. Using this ancient art as a basis and applying it to scenes mainly related to the middle Age, Mathilda has created a unique style in which the glass itself plays the primordial role. It is by painting on the glass (from behind) that the artist allows her modern-day imagination to run free in the service of the bygone art, revealing its forms and colors in ways which often totally surprise (and delight) the usually “blasé” contemporary audience.  

“Through my constant preoccupation with descriptive detail, the decorative profusion of the scenes I portray,  the sophisticated, languid sentiments, the almost total absence of reality, “she adds, I aim to direct my painting towards an extremely elegant organization of  linear rhythms and brilliant colors”.

The image is carried on glass exactly the same manner as on canvas, paper or wood; but when we look at the image, we look through the glass which serves both as a support and protective varnish. Everything is the reverse of traditional painting. The working image is on the back of the glass. The viewer looks through the glass on the painted layers. Letters, symbols, and images are painted on the mirror image of how they normally read, in order to be correct when the glass is turned over to be viewed.