Painter Madeleine Lemire, ARC (Royal Canadian Academy of Arts) was born in Oka in 1940. She earned a bachelor's degree in education from the University of Sherbrooke and studied at the École du Louvre in Paris, the Académie des Arts de Montréal, and the Saidye-Bronfman Centre. Her floral nature paintings and landscapes are bursting with color and movement.
A floral painting
"For several years, Madeleine Lemire painted floral nature. Her works were particularly stripped down and expressed themselves with a palette composed of pure colors. For the past ten years, landscapes have inspired her. Whatever the subject, however, her approach always advocates an exceptional freedom of treatment where the tawny color becomes the true pretext." Robert Bernier
His works are part of many public and private collections in Quebec, Canada and abroad.
ADDITIONAL ARTICLE(S):
Madeleine Lemire (1940)
Is it true to say that Madeleine Lemire is a painter with a single subject? Certainly, for several years now, she has been expressing herself primarily through floral nature. Huge flowers, in close-up. A single subject, undeniable observation, but subject to a wide variety of treatments. It would therefore be wrong to conclude that the artist suffers from a lack of inspiration. On the contrary, Madeleine Lemire often demonstrates audacity in her approach, not hesitating to push suggestion very far. Some of her recent paintings are even, in their plastic treatment, refined to the limit of recognizability. Her touch is simply magnificent. It sometimes resembles an aerial ballet, a waltz in space.
Throughout her work, Madeleine Lemire clearly expresses her attachment to her subject, of which she also seems to have a deep knowledge. Her paintings remain as much territory oscillating between illustration, suggestion and plastic freedom, the one that frees the painter from his subject. This amalgamation of characteristics can be perceived as a hesitation on her part to push, or even to push back the limits of representation, but it is precisely this duality that makes the richness of the artist and her work, her singularity in the community of painters who approach the theme of floral nature.
Source: Robert Bernier, Painting in Quebec since the 1960s, Les Éditions de l'Homme, 2002, Lemire Madeleine Lemire (1940), pages 320.
