Pauline, also known as Poe, is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice is rooted in portraiture but continually extends beyond it. Working fluidly across drawing, painting, film photography, and small-scale sculpture, she explores the quiet contradictions that shape identity — the real and the imagined, the intimate and the performative.

Her portraits often blend observation with invention. Poe is particularly fascinated by tattoos as narrative markers; she paints them onto subjects who don’t have them, overlaying the body with her own symbolic designs to reveal inner stories that haven’t yet surfaced on skin. This interplay between truth and artistic intervention runs through her work, giving each piece a sense of personal mythology.

Outside of her 2D work, Poe builds playful, tender sculptures — especially of her cat — using form and texture to capture the affection found in everyday relationships. Her love of film photography also anchors her practice; the grain, imperfection, and delay of analog processes echo the emotional honesty she seeks in her portraits.

Driven by curiosity rather than strict discipline, Poe treats her studio like a living organism: always shifting, always learning, always open to new materials and new ways of seeing.

She is now pursuing a master’s program in Paris to deepen her understanding of contemporary portraiture, expand her sculptural language, and refine the personal visual vocabulary that threads her work together.

WRITTEN BY A FRIEND