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 without any preliminary drawing, through intuition and a direct connection to a feeling. I start from an emotion, not a sketch.

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 offcuts, family fragments: every piece of cloth carries a story, a territory, a memory.

By cutting, layering and assembling them, I bring forth figures built in layers — much like what we are: memory, heritage, the emotion of the moment. The motif does not decorate the face, it constructs it: it becomes cheek, eyelid, gaze.

What one notices first are the colours — vivid, vibrant. But fabric does not reflect light the way paint does: velvet, brocade, silk catch and diffuse light differently depending on angle and lighting. The work changes with daylight, it lives.

This language of material and colour reveals inner states — fulfilment, desire, abundance, melancholy. That is what moves the viewer: they are not just looking at a portrait, they recognise something of their own memory, their own layers.

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 my CV (PDF) →

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

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Exhibitions — full list

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).
• October 2022 — Village d’Artistes, Rablay-sur-Layon (49), by invitation.
• 2023 — Musée Georges de Sonneville, Gradignan (33), month to be confirmed.
• June 2026 — Maison de quartier L’Archipel, Angers (49).
• Private patchwork group, Le Kremlin-Bicêtre (94), date to be confirmed.
• Private workshop in Simiane, Provence, date and département to be confirmed.
• Other editions of the Pour l'Amour du Fil fair: dates to be confirmed.

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Press

"The artist's work speaks to a broad and demanding audience, notably to collectors and curators of textile and fibre art."— Ainhoa Fernández, curator and journalist, April 2025

"Sculpted canvases at the border between painting and sculpture, part of the contemporary art of recycling."— Ouest France, October 2021

Read the full interview and all quotes →

Press kit

High-resolution artwork photos (300 dpi), free to use for press purposes, with photo credit.

• Vénus aux pivoines, 50 × 100 cm, 2025
• Éclaircie, 70 × 100 cm, 2025
• Fragments d'enfance, 80 × 93 cm, 2025
• Le boudoir fushia, 60 × 81 cm, 2025
• Le jardin la nuit, 40 × 60 cm, 2024
• L'Oiseau et le vent, 84 × 60 cm, 2025
• Love you XXL, 80 × 120 cm, 2025