Lisa Marie Boissonneau

Dates: July 3rd - August 28th

ARTISTIC APPROACH

Borrowed roots

This series of paintings draws upon family research, familial archives and personal memory to create large format portraits that explore the many aspects of identity.

It was common practice at my birth to force Canadian unwed mothers to surrender their illegitimate babies to adoption. These babies would go to traditional couples, that is to say married couples looking to grow their nuclear families. I was born in Moncton, New-Brunswick to a single mother and adopted by a married Catholic couple in Quebec.

In the course of browsing through old family photographs, I remember stories of past generations while at the same time interrogating my own identity.  Sometimes forgotten memories that would otherwise have been lost, or at least inaccessible, reappear. These images become an important source of inspiration in my work. They connect my childhood to the present; furthermore, I appropriate stories, links and sometimes even ancestors in my work.

In this acrylic series, I alternate between figuration and abstraction.  The figures inspired by my photographs are the true subject. They distinctly stand out with a concrete form combined with brisk intuitive brushwork mirroring the brevity of life.  Memories fade and new ones are created.  Each piece I realize is simultaneously an extension of the past, where I came from and what I have learned, as well as a glimpse of the future, where I am going.

Borrowed Roots is based on narrative memory and ancestral reverence combined with ambivalent feelings of loosing my origins and borrowing the identity of my adoptive family.  To this day, the absence of my Maritime family remains ever present in my life.

Visit Lisa’s website here.

Lisa Marie Boissonneau, BFA

Originally from Moncton, New Brunswick, Lisa Marie Boissonneau lives and works in the region of Mauricie in Quebec.  She holds a bachelor’s degree in fine arts with a specialization in drawing, painting and sculpture from Concordia University.  She continued her studies in painting at the École Supérieure des beaux-arts in Nîmes with the artist Hanibal Srouji.

From 1988 to 1999, she took part in the provincial and national snow sculpture competitions at the Quebec Carnaval as well as several international competitions in Manitoba, Wisconsin and the Colorado Rockies.  Since 2000, she has participated in various group and solo exhibitions, including Les Trésors de l’Estrie in Mégantic and the Corporation du Petit Séminaire in Saint-Georges.  She has also shown her work at the Artusiasm Gallery, the Black Cat Artspace in Toronto, the Paradox Theater, the Alt Art & Design Gallery and the Entrepôt Gallery in Montreal.

Lisa Marie Boissonneau is a member of the Arts Sutton art center, the Dorval artists’ Association and Culture Mauricie.