About the artist
Caroline Auvray is a French Parisian artist who lived in San Francisco for a few years.
After almost 20 years of medical studies and practice in France, she moved to California with her family and decided to devote her time to her dormant passion, painting.
Dazzled by the San Francisco houses’ beauty, charmed by their colors, fascinated by their elegant architecture, she immediately fell in love with them and wanted to celebrate them through her art.
Above all, Caroline aims to bring joy with her artwork to people and illuminate their homes and lives.
According to the outstanding research of Ingrid Fetell Lee (see her Ted Talk 2018*), joy hides in rounds, pops of bright colors, symmetrical shapes, abundance and multiplicity, feeling of lightness or elevation. Caroline tries to incorporate most of these patterns in her work to make the audience embrace joy as “joy is contagious, sharpens our minds and makes us more attractive and resilient”.
Caroline also likes to identify houses to women. In San Francisco, the famous Painted Ladies are forever and ever iconic characters of the city.
Whether they are all in length or more rounded, very made up and richly adorned or rather natural and all in simplicity, San Francisco’ houses remain always very elegant, shining and remarkable. We can not help but admire them.
A pretty little house is welcoming, reassuring, protective and soothing, like the arms of a mother, a sister or a friend. It sees us growing and moving forward, witnesses our joys, our sorrows, our lives.
For all these reasons and many more, SF Little Houses deserve to be celebrated and immortalized with a portrait, as a tribute to their beauty and soul.
Back in Paris, far from the sun and blue sky of California, the housing and streets of the French capital could have been seen a bit less colorful and joyful. And yet, joy and warmth also emanate superbly from the stone facades of Paris.
From the beautiful « hôtels particuliers » of the Marais, the blazing Haussmanian buildings, the pretty local boutiques, the great fashion and jewelry houses to historical monuments, how to not be inspired by the emblematic houses of the City of Light, Love, Art & Fashion? Even gray, « the sky of Paris », as Edith Piaf sang, "is not cruel for long; to make amends, offers a rainbow".
After "Les Petites Maisons SF", Caroline launches in 2022, a New Collection "Les Petites et les Grandes Maisons - Paris" and paints the custom-portrait of your houses, now in Paris… and beyond.