Biography

Katherine Roumanoff is a French visual artist who has spent nearly thirty years developing a singular practice of the textile portrait. Trained as a designer, she also worked as an illustrator and theatre costume designer, and composes with no preliminary sketch, from collected fabrics, offcuts and discontinued collections.

Her work has notably been shown at the Musée de la Manufacture Bohin, the Carrefour Européen du Patchwork, the Château de Gordes, the Musée Georges de Sonneville, the Espace Pierre Cardin and in several galleries. In 2025, she received the Le Livre d'Art Prize at the Salon d'Automne in Paris for Éclaircie. Her works question the visibility of women, the memory of materials, identity and inner transformation.

She lives and works on the banks of the Loire, near Angers, France.

Her childhood unfolds among the cotton prints, silks, rugs and fabrics her parents bring back from the East. The floral motifs, trees of life, palmettes and arabesques of these textiles very early become an imaginary territory for her.

"As a little girl, I was intoxicated by patterns. In my imagination I climbed the branches of trees of life. I took motionless journeys."

A graduate in design from the Créapôle-ESDI school in Paris in 1992, she began her career at the studio of Jean-Charles de Castelbajac, then worked for about twenty years as a designer and illustrator, mainly in the world of childhood.

She creates patterns, textile objects and puppets, works in furnishing and also becomes a theatre costume designer. It is backstage and in workshops that the fabric offcuts accumulate which will gradually feed her personal work.

Her path later leads her toward writing, theatre and therapeutic support. Trained in hypnosis, she practises for several years as a hypnotherapist. This experience deepens her interest in inner images, the mechanisms of memory, emotions, and the way each person is built from their history and what they have absorbed from the world around them. This attention to the psyche gradually merges with her plastic work.

Her portraits today are essentially feminine. Imaginary figures, fragments of self-portrait and states of being, they give shape to inner landscapes where personal memory, family heritage, cultures, emotions and representations intermingle.

Textile remains the material of choice for this research. Katherine Roumanoff gathers upholstery fabrics, remnants of discontinued collections, costume offcuts, fragments kept in family homes, and fabrics brought back from travels. She cuts, assembles and layers them to bring her figures into being.

Her work has notably been shown at the Textile Museum of Haute-Alsace, the Musée de la Manufacture Bohin, and the Musée Sonneville. In 2025, Éclaircie received the Le Livre d'Art Prize in the Naive Art section of the Salon d'Automne in Paris. In 2026, the Espace d'art contemporain de Trélazé devotes a carte blanche to her across 1,200 m². That same year, the Maison de l'Environnement in Angers presents, among others, Portraits en parures végétales, where her works are in dialogue with the texts of botanist Pascal Lacroix.

Artistic approach — Inner landscapes

I mainly compose feminine figures.

My portraits are born in contact with the fabrics, through intuition and a direct connection to a feeling. I start from an emotion and let the composition take shape as the work progresses.

I love motifs for what they carry within them: flowers, leaves, trees of life, palmettes, birds — forms drawn from multiple decorative traditions, which have crossed cultures and uses before entering my compositions. I work from collected upholstery fabrics, theatre costume offcuts, family fabric fragments: every piece of cloth carries a story, a territory, a memory.

By cutting and juxtaposing them, I bring forth figures built through assemblage — metaphors for what we are: successive events, multiple transgenerational inheritances, the influence of upbringing, the desires and emotions of the moment.

The colours catch the eye first, vivid and vibrant. Then the material reveals its nuances: velvet, cotton prints, brocade each catch and diffuse light in their own way.

This language of material and colour reveals inner states — fulfilment, desire, abundance, melancholy. The viewer recognises something of their own memory, their own layers, in it.

Training and background

• 1992 — Degree in industrial design, Créapôle-ESDI, Paris (5-year postgraduate diploma)
• Collaboration at the Jean-Charles de Castelbajac studio
• 1993–2013 — Independent designer and illustrator, mainly in the world of childhood; creation of patterns, illustrations and textiles
• Theatre costume designer: drawing, material research, composition and assembly of fabrics. Her first textile figures are born from costume offcuts
• 2014–2024 — Hypnotherapist; this experience feeds her work on inner landscapes, identity, memory and transformation
• Author of seven books published by Éditions Eyrolles, including three graphic novels she illustrated herself
• Author and theatre teacher

Distinction

• Le Livre d'Art Prize — Salon d'Automne 2025, Naive Art section — for the work Éclaircie

Publications

• 2019 — Portraits textiles, artist's catalogue, 200 pages, published by Quiltmania, foreword by Alain Vircondelet (out of print)
• Seven books published by Éditions Eyrolles, on the psyche, therapy and the imagination, including three graphic novels

Download the full CV (PDF) →

Receive the catalogue

Free download of the catalogue Portraits textiles, 28 ans de création — 200 pages, published by Quiltmania.

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Exhibitions — full list

Touring exhibition available

Portraits en parures végétales, thirty large-format textile portraits installed outdoors in dialogue with the texts of botanist Pascal Lacroix, is available for touring to other venues.Learn more and make a request →

Workshops and outreach

As an extension of her exhibitions, Katherine Roumanoff designs and leads textile-portrait workshops for a range of audiences. Working from a selection of fabrics, participants experiment with cutting and assembling shapes and patterns to gradually bring a figure into being.

These workshops approach textile as a material that carries memory, but also as a language accessible to all. They offer a hands-on way into the artist's practice, grounded in observation, intuition and freedom of composition.

These sessions are most often designed around an exhibition. They can take the form of a one-off workshop, a meeting with the artist, a guided tour, or a participatory project developed with an institution.

Over the years

• September 2018 — Carrefour Européen du Patchwork, Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines (68): textile-portrait workshop for 25 people.
• April 2019 — Pour l'Amour du Fil textile fair, Nantes (44).
• 2019 — Patchwork workshop in Simiane, la Rotonde, Provence.
• October 2022 — Village d’Artistes, Rablay-sur-Layon (49).
• October 2022 — Private patchwork group, Le Kremlin-Bicêtre (94).
• 2023 — Musée Georges de Sonneville, Gradignan (33).
• June 2026 — Maison de quartier L’Archipel, Angers (49).

Carrefour Européen du Patchwork, Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines

Maison de quartier L'Archipel, Angers

Salon Pour l'Amour du Fil, Nantes

Village d'Artistes, Rablay-sur-Layon

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Press kit

Artwork and artist photos in low resolution (1,200 px), available to download once you've entered your details. Credit required: © Katherine Roumanoff. High resolution (300 dpi) available on request bye-mail.

Press releases

• Press release — Women, inner landscapes, Town Hall of the 16th arrondissement, Paris (.pdf, in French)
• Press release — Carte Blanche, Trélazé (.docx)

See press publications →