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About Hélène Lachapelle
Quebec painter

Hélène Lachapelle is a contemporary Quebec painter. Her abstract and semi-abstract artwork transports us into imaginary worlds bringing us towards to new realities. She began her career as an artist in 2010 and has since exhibited her works in various festivals, events, collectives, symposiums, solos and galleries across the province of Quebec and including several virtual exhibitions in the United States.


In her paintings, Hélène Lachapelle explores themes of movement, spirituality and imagination. Her unique and colorful style is inspired by nature, the essence of the landscape, fauna, particularly birds, the elements and organic forms that make up our universe. Her gesture is free and intuitive. Using abstract and semi-abstract painting techniques, she creates artworks that invites the viewers to explore their own imagination and connect to the beauty of the world around them.


Explore the site to discover the works of Hélène Lachapelle and to learn more about her creative process and her inspiration.

Painting workshop of the painter Hélène Lachapelle

Artist biography

Hélène Lachapelle, born in 1954, in Montreal, residing in Saint-Eustache (Lower Laurentides) Quebec.

 

Second in a family of eight, rather modest and little encouraging of the arts or higher studies. In 1958, her family settled permanently in Laval-Ouest. At a very young age, curiously, her main interests and refuges were in her studies and her drawings. Two of her aunts noticed her talent. She completed a classical course and, encouraged by two teachers, pursued college studies in visual arts. She also completed an additional year in secretarial studies, which is how her officiel studies ended.

 

Life experiences brought her back to painting and, in her mid-twenties (1979), with a child to support and working in the legal field, she enrolled in drawing/oil painting classes. From 1984 to 1992, she learned the techniques of the great masters and made many successful reproductions. At the same time, she plays with ink and recognizes her need to create, to visit her imagination.

In 1994, she saw works by Yolaine Lefebvre, a member of the Canadian Watercolor Society, and was fascinated by the movement, fluidity and singularity of the colorful subjects. Observational drawing, intuitive development, exploration of movement and accepting the unexpected! Until 2002, a sort of permission and a more in-depth and intoxicating research process took hold.

 

In 2005, after a few workshops at Saydie Bronfman and Seymour Segal (Montreal), she headed to the school of Francine Labelle, a renowned colorist painter in Montreal, with the intention of working with acrylic for more latitude and to learn more about color. Then she continued with Jeannine Teebhoo (2006-2011) in an approach focused on intuition and confidence. This period proved fruitful.

 

It was finally in 2013-2022, with Caroline Archambault, visual painter, from Saint-Sauveur, that she finds her creative self. . She learns about transformation, abstraction, movement, gesture, the importance of emptiness and the philosophy behind Chinese painting. Each workshop is new, fascinating and full of respect. She dives into it to her heart's content.

 

This is all that her signature brings together today. In the hollow of your ear, she will whisper to you that what has best influenced her creation is the search for her personal identity through her life experiences, her resilience, her authenticity and her courage. She wanted to meet and reveal this hidden part of her that didn't feel like she had the “right to exist” and to bring it out into the open. This now allows her to reach unsuspected heights that she has the joy of sharing, if only to enrich humanity. What seems to be for her a wonderful alchemy.

Artistic training

2013-2022      Acrylic Painting, Caroline Archambault, St-Sauveur

                        Observation, drawing, color, composition, abstraction, tools and mediums, movement, light, transparency,                            poetry and self-expression

2006-2011     Acrylic Painting and learning through "Seeing" (intuition and trust), Jeannine Teebhoo - Montreal

2005-2006   Acrylic Painting and observational drawing (right hemisphere), Francine Labelle - Montreal

2003-2005   Various workshops at the Saydie Bronfman Center and with Seymour Segal, Montreal

1994-2002    Watercolor, drawing, and creative exploration, Yolaine Lefebvre, SCA member - Sainte-Thérèse

1986-1992     Oil Painting, Techniques of the great masters, Georges Boka - St-Eustache

1979-1982     Oil Painting and drawing, Samir Kachami, St-Eustache

1970-1972     DEC in Fine Arts, Cégep Lionel-Groulx - Ste-Thérèse

Artistic approach

I paint intuitively in the movement inspired by the wind, the water, the bird, in a free gesture, sometimes slow or lively, sometimes small or very large, willingly going beyond the edges of the canvas. It is this same movement that slips into me when I manage to put myself in "free mode", without waiting or expecting,  and then it seems I'm able to cross borders, inviting the sky and anchoring it in my land. This openness to something greater than oneself first led me along the thread of my imagination but also guided me towards my own intuition. I take pleasure in combining materiality and the density of the visible world with the presence of the immaterial, the invisible, seeking to bring out off the void the movement that circulates in everything, that unites and where transformations take place.

This is how, little by little, by giving up control, by trying not to say everything, to keep the mystery alive to leave room for the story in the imagination of the observer, that this meeting with my “missing part” occurred. Not that I found the answer or the way but rather that I appreciate the dialogue with the canvas, the response offered by the materials used, the doubt, the unpredictability. Yes, I enjoy searching... and letting myself be surprised by the presence of the intimate and the unsuspected intention of the artist that lives within me when I manages to silence my head and let the essence pass through. The images that arise from these dialogues often speak of the elements, organic worlds, wildlife and the connection that lives there.

In closing, I would like to remind you of this phrase from René Char: “We cannot achieve the impossible but it serves as a lantern for us. » and to which I ask the question “What if we could reach it? »

Honors

Awards and recognitions

2024   Excellence Award, Annual Competition, 27th edition, under the theme "Rupture", at  Maison des arts St-Faustin,                for "À me briser les ailes et mon coeurs d'alouette"

            Finalist Award, Shades or Green competition, Camelback Gallery, Arizona, for "Luciole"

            Bronze Award, Abstracts with Red competition, Camelback Gallery, Arizona, for "Brasier"

            Silver Award, Artist Inventional VIII, Camelback Gallery, Arizona, for "Efflorescence"

            Finalist Award, Shades of Blue competition, Camelback Gallery, Arizona, for "Jaillir des profondeurs"

2023   3rd Award, Mascouche Arts Festival

2023   3rd Award, Visual Arts Exhibition of Sainte-Anne-des-Plaines

2023   3rd Award, Amateur Category, Blainville-Art thematic exhibition, “Tribute to Riopelle”

2010    1st Award, Public Choice, Bois-des-Filion Painting Symposium

1998    Mention “Fluidity and movement”, 15th Salon, SCA, Montreal

1987    Choice of the painting given to the honorary president, Yvon Deschamps, at the Salon de l’oeuvre d’art du

            Quebec, Laval

Comments from judges and other renowned artists

  • Great poetry and evocative presence

  • The gesture dominates the form, everything is open and suggested

  • Great mastery of acrylic (subtlety of the palette, use of glazes)

  • Balance in composition

  • Grace in movement

  • Beautiful light and infinite softness

  • Of distinct quality

  • Captivating

  • Profoundness

  • Magnificent colors

  • Shown restraint, going straight to the point

  • No need for more to understand the work

  • Hypnotic

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