Stéphane Malassine Artworks

Let’s get personal:

In April 2018, after spending the darkest and lowest period of my life for three years, painfully challenging my own purpose, meaning and identity, I found myself heading Westbound on a plane looking for answers.

I was desperately seeking love & humanity other than through my daughter’s eyes and embraces. I was slowly loosing faith in humans, society and myself in the process. Somehow I needed to react, rebuild from the ground up, to feel part of, to feel alive again, and have faith in life. Unexpectedly one morning on May 2nd, I finally and literally saw myself coming out of the darkness and finding it again through Mother Nature.

“Towards the Light” is a collection of images created at the mystical and magical location of Antelope Canyon, AZ. It will be released progressively over the current year as it is a large collection of familiar and abstract imagery.

I visited the canyon with the intent to humbly surrender to the intense spirituality and energy of the location. I didn’t want the temptation to be visually charmed by its sheer perfect natural and colorful beauty. I also didn’t want to just document the gorgeous surface of these sandstone walls created over thousands of years to make pretty pictures. So many years to slowly create these smooth, flowing walls, curves and shapes dancing and playing with the light within. Surely this place is a metaphor for something intangible, something we all have experienced deep within us. Right away, as I entered the canyon I realized I had to convey the intense emotion and unique energy the light and the walls created within me. The surfaces of the canyon combined with the light penetrating its walls created ephemeral abstract (yet familiar) shapes. These shapes of light engulfed me with a deep sense of comfort, spirituality, peace, harmony, belonging, and love for freedom and life.

The experience of going through the canyon was literally the catalyst to the rebirth of my heart and soul. These emotions were compounded with a sensation of trust, strength and oneness with the universe I had never felt before. I came out of the canyon forever a changed man that day.

The experience I felt there was so intense that I did not look at the images for 6 years, until 2024. Seeing them for the first time last year flooded me with even more emotions as I was discovering for the first time the inner beauty of the canyon visually. Ever so delicate in its sensual (sometimes feminine) shapes and powerful light suggesting the direction through darkness. Six years later, the images reminded me that the answers always came from “Within” and that the path is “Towards the Light.”