Programming
Michèle Delisle
Paintings
How randomness will take its shape... who knows? But there may be a sensation.
The Pretext?
" To paint, a pretext (an idea) is not essential. Far from it. Generally speaking, I know very little when I begin a canvas. How chance will take shape... who can say? Yet there may be a sensation. Or an image that becomes the pretext for beginning. And sometimes, this pretext, which seemed no more than a vague excuse for confronting the blank canvas, takes root, grows richer, thickens with new sensations that are all connected to it. Why?
It remains a mystery. One only discovers it later. That is the magic of the act of painting. Picasso once said that if you already know what you are going to paint, it is hardly worth beginning. Dare I then confide my pretext to you? For the moment, it is the only thing I can do. But let us speak of an attraction rather than an idea.
The vessel as a container. An outside, but also an inside. Full, empty, opaque or transparent. Open like a well, or closed around its contents. Throughout his life, Morandi painted vessels. He breathed into them a life that transformed them into characters. I saw the vessel instead as a space. And a space, generally, bounded. Until the day when, by chance, the cosmos fell into the urn.
To this first "pretext," paradoxically, Braque's oysters, served on a platter, were added: their unctuousness, their softness, the thickness of their flesh. Matter as opposed to emptiness. Yet even this union was unpremeditated. If I chose to preserve it, it was because, together, these two things gave me the feeling of reaching the totality of the world. Curiously, the oyster and the vessel both contained infinity within themselves. Everything else was unpredictable. Every association was a surprise. And there could be others. Yours, for instance.The way the randomness will take shape...who knows? But there can be a feeling. Or an image, which becomes the pretext to begin. And sometimes, this pretext, which seemed to be only a vague excuse to face the white canvas, becomes embedded, enriched, thickened with new sensations that are all linked to it. Why? " - Michèle Delisle
Born in Saint-Jérôme, Quebec, in 1947, Michèle Delisle divides her time between Montréal and Florence, Italy. She earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Concordia University and studied printmaking with Francine Beauvais in 1976. She has presented approximately forty solo and group exhibitions in Canada and abroad. Delisle has received grants from Quebec's Ministère des Affaires culturelles. Her work is held in the collections of major corporations as well as in the Canada Council Art Bank.