"Starting all over at age 38 really helped me to grow,
believe in myself and reconnect to who I truly was...it was a process of remembering."
Naïma
The Artist Behind the Art
Hello, I'm Naïma.
I'm a French contemporary artist living in the south of France. Although I now call Bordeaux home, my story began in Normandy, where I grew up surrounded by meadows, forests, and endless countryside.
Just a few miles from Claude Monet's home, I spent my childhood sketching flowers, birds, and wildlife, long before I ever imagined becoming a professional artist.
At the age of 38, I made one of the biggest decisions of my life. I chose to let go of fear and begin again.
That decision became the beginning of a deeply personal healing journey… one rooted in self-love, slowing down, embracing the rhythm of nature, and rediscovering the dreams I had carried since childhood.
Where It All Began
As a child, I often felt lonely and disconnected from myself. I grew up in a very restrictive, patriarchal environment where freedom was limited, both for my mother and for my sisters and me. As a young girl, I felt that there were parts of myself I wasn't allowed to fully express—especially my femininity, my sensitivity, and my desire to simply be myself.
Nature became my refuge.
I found freedom in the meadows and forests near my home, and even in my own garden. Being surrounded by nature gave me a feeling of peace and possibility that I couldn't always find elsewhere.
And I had art...I started sketching very young. I would draw flowers, birds, animals, portraits and the things that caught my attention. Creating gave me a way to express something I didn't always have words for.
Then, when I was eleven, a school trip took me to Claude Monet's home and gardens in Giverny.
Something happened there that I didn't fully understand at the time.
I was surrounded by art, poetry, light, flowers, water, and nature—and somehow, everything seemed to belong together.
I came home knowing that I loved art.
I just didn't yet know what that would mean for my life.
As I grew older, the path became more complicated. I struggled at school, experienced rejection and racism, and continued to feel different and disconnected.
At fourteen, my family moved to the south of France, and I had to leave behind the garden and familiar places that had given me comfort.
I found new creative interests in photography and graphic design and eventually began working, while continuing to carry the quiet dream of becoming an artist.
For many years, that dream stayed somewhere inside me.
I didn't lose it.
I simply stopped believing it was possible.
Into the Wild
Over the years, travel became an important part of my journey back to myself. I was always drawn to wild landscapes and places where I could feel a sense of freedom and connection—to nature, to the world, and somehow, to myself.
Canada, the Rockies, Yellowstone, Vancouver Island, and other wild places became sources of inspiration. I traveled in search of wolves and bears, but also in search of something I could not yet put into words.
Wolves, in particular, had fascinated me since childhood. Their freedom, resilience, instinct, and deep connection to their environment resonated with something within me. Seeing them in the wild for the first time in Yellowstone was a profound experience.
I had spent years feeling disconnected from myself, and suddenly I was surrounded by a landscape where everything felt alive, instinctive, and free.
That experience slowly brought me back to painting. In 2017, after years of working as a graphic designer, I picked up a brush again and allowed myself to paint without asking whether I was good enough. I began by reproducing paintings by Monet and Renoir, partly as a challenge to myself—to see what I could create without formal lessons.
But something unexpected happened.
Through those paintings, I wasn't simply learning technique. I was reconnecting with the little girl who had once stood in Monet's garden and felt completely captivated by the way art, nature, and beauty could exist together.
I began to understand that she had never really disappeared.
She had simply been waiting for me to come back to her.
The Garden Where
I Found Myself Again
In 2020, I returned to Claude Monet's house and gardens in Giverny, the place I had first discovered on a school trip when I was eleven.
I was 37.
Returning to that place after so many years felt deeply symbolic. I was standing in the same gardens where, as a child, I had first experienced that overwhelming sense of beauty and possibility—but this time, I was seeing them through the eyes of the woman I had become.
It felt like meeting my younger self again.
I realized that the dream of becoming an artist had never really left me. I had simply spent years believing that it was too late, too difficult, or somehow meant for someone else.
Coming back to Monet's garden became part of a much deeper shift in my life. I decided to stop waiting for permission and to start over at 38. To trust that it wasn't too late.
To finally give the little girl who had dreamed of becoming an artist a chance to see what might happen if I believed in her.
And perhaps that is what my journey has really been about—not becoming someone completely new, but returning to the parts of myself that were there all along.
The child who loved to draw.
The woman who felt most free in nature.
The woman who run with the wolves
And the artist who, after years of searching, finally picked up a brush and began again.
Everything was already there, waiting to emerge.
The Power of being Seen
Today, painting women, nature's poetry and feminine energy has become an important part of my artistic practice.
My work is rooted in a belief that softness is not weakness, that freedom can take many forms, and that being a wild woman does not mean being “too much”—it means having the courage to be fully yourself.
In many ways, my paintings are statements about freedom, self-expression, and the return to oneself. They are also deeply connected to the women who believed in me along the way.
At a time when I had lost confidence in myself, one woman encouraged me to leave a job where I was unhappy and trust that I was capable of something more. Years later, another woman in California saw me creating a henna design and told me, “If I can paint, you can paint too.”
Her belief in me made me believe in myself. I came home, bought my first acrylic paints, brushes and canvases, and began painting again.
Those moments taught me how powerful it can be when one person sees something in you before you can see it in yourself.
And that is part of what I hope my own paintings can offer. Of course, I want to create beauty—to bring softness, emotion and a sense of wonder into people's homes.
But beyond beauty, I want my work to be a reminder. A reminder to reconnect with what makes you feel alive, whether that means painting, writing, photography, traveling, creating, or simply listening to the part of yourself you may have forgotten.
If my paintings can make someone feel something, remember a dream, trust herself a little more, or take one small step back toward who she truly is, then they have already become something more than paintings.
They have become a way of passing that belief forward.
If my story resonates with you, I invite you to explore my collection and discover the original paintings I create to bring beauty, freedom, and a little wildness into your home.
