Françoise Nielly

Official site: http://www.francoise-nielly.com/

Biography
Françoise Nielly is a French knife-painter who is famous for painting vibrant and colourful closeup portraits of people such as Barack Obama. She was born in Marseille, brought up near Cannes and Saint-Tropez and is now living in Paris.

Françoise Nielly’s artwork is typically vibrant, and detailed. A lot of her work is inspired by urban life. Françoise uses knives to paint her artwork as she seems to prefer the thick, clean brushstrokes created by them. Painting portraits is her speciality. As a child, she was taught by her father that there was “no room for mistakes”, and this has potentially influenced the intricacy of her artwork. She layers her paintings with bright and contrasting colour. She was represented in many exhibitions and art fairs in Europe (Spain, France, UK) and America (US, Canada).

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran%C3%A7oise_Nielly