Featured Artist: French painter Miss Van

Miss Van, Vanessa Alice Bensimon (also known as Vanessa Castex), born in 1973 in Toulous, France is considered one of the best known painters of the graffiti scene.
Miss Van started painting walls in the streets of Toulouse at the age of 18. Her drawings are of sloe-eyedwomen, of varied forms, expressing a wide varied of seemingly complex emotions.

Recent artistic pursuits have taken her to Los Angeles, Miami, Spain and Brazil. This move towards working overseas signalling a return to street art, after several years spent painting in the studio. Her new work has an increased depth and emotion, an elevated romantic darkness and delicacy. Her iconic sultry female characters are described on her website as “sensual yet dark,” carrying a “surreal quality of burlesque, resonating with a beautiful synergy of rawness, softness and emotion.”



missvan.com
Extracts from this interview appear in IdN vol.23, no.1 Contemporary Street Art Graphics, a joint collaboration with IdN + Inkygoodness, published June 2016.