We Are The Painters is the collaborative name of artists Nicolas Beaumelle and Aurélien Porte—a declaration as much as an identity. Since joining forces in 2004, the pair have cultivated a painting practice that resists categorization. Working in a seamless exchange of gestures, they build images together until authorship becomes indistinguishable. Recurring motifs anchor their visual language: women with near-identical faces and hair, as though suspended outside of time; the Mont Chauve hill near Nice, returned to again and again; inverted bistro chairs painted on both sides and arranged as sculptural objects; and cave-like openings that suggest hidden passages. Their creativity extends beyond the canvas into long-term projects, such as Paint for Ulma, a film chronicling the fantastical journey of a goat transformed into art and guided by nine muses toward its final home in a museum. Economical in technique yet rich in atmosphere, their paintings often consist of expansive planes of warm and cool colors—sometimes harmonious, sometimes deliberately at odds. The result is a body of work that feels timeless, elemental, and quietly mythic. ...
