Illuminating the World, One Brushstroke at a Time

 

There are artists who create, and there are those who illuminate. Sandrine Charraut belongs resolutely to the latter. Born on the outskirts of Paris, in the quiet shadows of the City of Light, Sandrine’s earliest years were marked by hardship — yet from the beginning, light was her language. Under the gentle guidance of her godfather "Vivi," drawing became her escape, her refuge, and eventually, her calling. In those first sketches, always a sun — radiant, central — as if even then, she understood that art could transform darkness into gold.

 

Today, Sandrine is a luminous voice — an artist whose work carries a rare emotional frequency: intimate, soul-deep, and alight with hope. Entirely self-taught in her early years, her first artistic infatuation came at age twenty, when she purchased a lithograph by Valadié. It was not merely an acquisition; it was a revelation. Valadié's mastery of light ignited something within her, and Sandrine began her own artistic apprenticeship — a journey across mediums, countries, and inner landscapes. Influenced by Betty Edwards' revolutionary approach to perception, she learned to draw from the right side of the brain, unlocking emotional intuition and visual poetry.

In February 2024, at the age of 55, she made a bold, life-defining leap: she left the corporate world behind to answer the true call of her spirit — to become, fully and without compromise, a professional artist. Her training with the Milan Art Institute was not just an education, but a declaration. Her voice had found its canvas.

Eclectic and profoundly cosmopolitan, Sandrine’s work is a reflection of a life lived with openness. She is a traveler, a seeker, a gentle observer of the human soul. Her artistic process is deeply informed by her love of photography, her fascination with the gestures and expressions of strangers, and her habit of sketching people quietly from café terraces or along sun-drenched shores. Every canvas is a dialogue between observation and emotion — a dance between control and surrender.

Working primarily in mixed media and oil, Sandrine’s paintings are immersive experiences. They shimmer with layered meanings and painterly textures, often orbiting around one central force: light. To encounter her work is to feel a sense of healing — a warm invitation back to oneself. Each piece whispers: you are seen, you are luminous, you are enough.

“I want to transmit light and inspiration into your life journey,” Sandrine says. “May my art give you wings to live your life to the fullest — with colored lenses.”

 

Now based primarily in Northern Spain, with satellite studios in Paris and Northern Italy, she continues to build a body of work inspired by her travels, her encounters, and the emotional landscape of the human condition. She dreams of one day opening a larger, public studio space, where others can step into the radiant world she creates — a world that began long ago with a little Parisian girl drawing suns to survive, and blossomed into an artist who paints to illuminate.​​​​