Artist statement
Self-taught artist native of Quebec, Marie Plante was a child psychiatrist and her passion for the arts has been present since childhood.
Canadian geese, migratory birds that feed on the shore of the St. Lawrence River, were her first inspiration. The shores are rich with life and lead her to paint large sea birds and vegetation.
Over time her creative approach leads her to express the shore and the migration more than to paint it figuratively. Her shores become more abstract, suggested. Her birds are sketched. The vegetation is represented by drawing the tall grasses. Her banks evolve and tell a different story one year to another. Her «Rives d'eau» collection is her largest and rich of evolution.
The figurative and the portrait are reminded to her periodically and a bird emerges from the canvas, taken from a travel photo or that of a photographer from Quebec with authorization. Except for her bird paintings, the spontaneity of creation prevails in her works. The balance of shapes and colors guides her. Acrylic allows her more creative freedom and her approach has broken away from observational drawing to target the imaginary, joyful and serene interpretation of nature so that her art brightens up.
Several collections of works overlap and complement each other: Rives d'eau / Shores, Oiseaux / Birds, Quatre éléments / Four Elements, Plumes / Feathers ...
She plays with textures with the knife and colors, and recently with a layer of mortar that she prints to texture her work. Her colors have the radiance of the pigments of life and she works them with gestures, in the drawing of curves, the brushstroke, the sliding of the knife or the spray of the aerosol.
In 2020-21, the year of the pandemic, the shores change, become isolated to the point of being unrecognizable. Then the desire for other shores self-imposes. Dreamed shores, migrations to an elsewhere invade the canvas. Even without traveling, the inner journey is always possible.
While turquoise is in the spotlight during the first wave of the pandemic, it is accompanied by orange and gives way to red and black with the second wave. Gold, its favorite color, retains all its importance. And she finalizes her work with gold color in string to highlight a detail, crimp and enhance the subject. The gold color and its luminous reflections are part of the Plante’s signature.
Her art is evolving as she continually explores new techniques. If 2020 was the year of acrylic spray, stencils, and textures, 2021 will see her tame the airbrush. She allows herself to use as stencils: ferns, pine branches and goldenrods from her land on the north shore of St-Lawrence river.
Nature is precious, beautiful, sacred! Through her art, Marie Plante wants people to discover, respect, and preserve the beauty of nature.
March 2021
CV
Galleries
2017 Galerie d'art Chez l'Artiste, 84 1/2 rue Petit-Champlain, Quebec city
2017 Galerie Zen, 1139 rue St-jean, Quebec city
2016 Nob Hill Art Gallery - July to October
2016 Galerie Zen - May, September to December
2015-2016 OFF Galerie, partner artist
Virtual Galleries
Solo exhibitions
2013 Solo exhibition "Persona…Grata" 4th enriched edition, Le Tournesol library, Quebec
2013 Solo exhibition "Pastel drawing portraits", Les Fistons restaurant, Quebec
2010 Solo exhibition "Persona Grata…A face is worth a thousand words"
2nd edition, Alain-Grandbois library, Saint-Augustin-de-Desmaures
2010 Solo exhibition "Persona Grata…a face is worth a thousand words"
3rd edition, Roger Lemelin library, Cap-Rouge
2009 Solo exhibition "Persona Grata…a face is worth a thousand words", Maison Magella Paradis Art Gallery, Trait-Carré, Charlesbourg
2001 Solo exhibition "Augustin geese", Alain Grandbois library, St-Augustin-de- Desmaures
Group exhibitions
Pastel Society of Eastern Canada: Ogilvy’s exhibition room and Galerie Richelieu, Montreal; Grand Théâtre de Québec
Le groupe des Pastellistes du jeudi : Noël-Brulart community center, Bagel traditionnel restaurant and Les Fistons restaurant, Quebec City; Maison de la culture de l’Ancienne Lorette
Association culturelle de Saint-Augustin-de-Desmaures : Maison de la culture, Maison Thibault-Soulard and Alain-Grandbois library, Saint-Augustin-de-Desmaures
Société des arts de l’Ancienne Lorette
Société artistique et culturelle de Québec, Quebec City Library Network
Symposiums
2017 Bienvenue en ville, Quebec City, February 2-3
2017 Rendez-vous Art Contemporain, May 21-22
2017 Decouvrarts, June 3-4
2017 Visit'Arts-Québec June 17-18
2017 Symposium de Kamouraska July19-24
2017 Symposium Arts et Reflets August 11-13
2017 Symposium Plaines en couleurs August 25-27
2017 Symposium Victo et ses oies, à venir October 28-29
Professionnal Associations
Marie Plante has been a signature member of the Pastel Society of Eastern Canada (PSEC) since 2014.
She is a member of the Regroupement des artistes en art visuel du Québec (RAAVQ), the Société artistique et culturelle de Québec (SACQ) and the Association culturelle de St-Augustin-de-Desmaures (ACSAD).
Since September 2016, she has been on the board of administrators of the Société artistique et culturelle de Québec (SACQ).
Marie Plante, a native of Quebec City, has studied and worked as a child and adolescent psychiatrist, but her passion for arts has followed her throughout her career. Over the years, her natural gift for drawing, painting, and arts in general has led her to learn how to use multiple art media. In the 2000s, her artistic career became more defined and she started exhibiting her work.
Pastel period
Along the St. Laurence River, she observes Canada geese. These magnificent birds are her inspiration for twenty pastel drawings for a first solo exhibition "Augustin Geese" in 2001. Her strong interest in the human being leads her to choose this medium known for its subtlety in portraiture. The dry pastel portrait workshop sessions she attends, run by pastellists and painters Francine Gauthier, Cathia Hamel, Denis Jacques, Fleurette Sauvageau, and Isabelle Hêtu, complete her drawing and dry pastel portrait training.
Her passion for portraits conditions her production. When she paints portraits, she feels like she is meeting with her subject and trying to understand his personality, his emotions, his joys and pains. Pastel drawing enables her painting style to be either gestural or nuanced and it necessarily involves the integration of the mind, perception, emotion, and movement.
Acrylic period
In recent years, she has been focusing on her painting. Her production pace has increased, since she has more time to explore visual arts and creativity. In 2010, she has adopted acrylic painting and since 2014, her acrylic painting production has become more important and has reached maturity. Here again, this medium allows her style to be either gestural or nuanced, and both the use of the paint brush and the palette knife offer that possibility. Colors are predominant in her work, whether she uses a bright color spectrum or a rather limited one.