To paint is for Martine Fontayne “an absolute need”. To paint the body is the principal subject of her research. “Not the body in its illustrated representation but the body in the expression of the emotions, the feelings, the sensuality, the desire, the fractures… ”. To paint a naked body, stripped of any social envelope, is to perceive the identity of each one, its flesh, its color, its hollows and its full, the shades and lights, as if places where our glance is delayed, dissecting piece by piece the essential life, with ardour or abandonment. She calls them “her body landscapes”
The hand, free of any analysis, adapts the subject, thus conveying the emotion which the artist shares. The gestural brisk, indissociable of its search for “the absolute resemblance”. It is as if writing a fragment of life, that of the model seized in its loneliness. It becomes a collective adventure, that of the model, the spectator and the artist. When the pose is calm, the representation of the subject is still filled of a kind of vibration: “the one moment moment”.
“The artist voluntarily chooses a painting close to the outline, like the fulgurance of feelings. An expression which does not stop with the detail but seeks the intensity of the emotion”. In her paintings on the topic of Argentinean tango one finds the same intent, as if clothing were only one second skin, in total fusion with the flesh which carries them.

The feature remains present, is erased sometimes for better rebirth, then digging the still fresh pigment. She signs her major attachment to the drawing, primary source of her work. The artist likes the matter; delected to triturate the paste, often leaves unscathed zones on the fabric, and plays with scratches, scrapings, and the reliefs. The oil but also collage, pigments, dyes, marble powder, pastels and charcoals intermingled. Reliefs emerge “like the marks of time on the walls of a rocked shelter” she says. “A short moment of emotion dedicated to the past… the flesh is always there”