This exhibition by Josiane Lanthier marks the first collaboration between the painter and Galerie Simon Blais. A professional artist since 2008, she completed a bachelor's degree in visual and media arts at UQAM in 2014. Since then, Josiane Lanthier has made a name for herself in Quebec with her experimental, ultra-colourful and contrasting paintings. Originally from the greater Montreal area, the artist lives and works in Baie-Saint-Paul. Since her arrival there in 2020, her studio has become a popular venue in the region's art scene.

“Entre fleuve et montagnes” presents a coherent body of landscape paintings from her immediate Charlevoix environment. With her in situ painting, she follows in the tradition of landscape painting in Canada and Quebec. In her most recent series, regional landmarks such as the summit of La Chouenne, the Rivière du Gouffre and L'Isle-aux-Coudres identify the territory. Located at the edge of the Charlevoix astrobleme geological phenomenon, the municipality of Baie-Saint-Paul is the result of a meteorite impact over 320 million years ago. In Lanthier’s paintings, the impact of this geological event on the region becomes tangible. The invisible energy of the explosion manifests itself in the artist’s paintings through a vibrant colour palette, fluorescent auras and thick matter that pierces the patterns.

The series of works presented here become panoramas documenting the birth of Charlevoix thanks to the radiance of the meteorite, which appears in Josiane Lanthier's work like a sun illuminating the entire landscape with an unprecedented light.

The titles of the paintings presented here become topographical poems that complete the multisensory experience of Josiane Lanthier's work.

Biographical notes for Josiane Lanthier

Born in 1989, Josiane Lanthier holds a bachelor's degree in visual and media arts from UQAM. Focusing mainly on landscape painting, her work is presented at Galerie Simon Blais, in Montreal, and Galerie Champagne et Paradis, in Kamouraska. Her work can be found in private collections in Canada, the United States and Europe.

For more than a decade, Josiane Lanthier has been developing a practice based essentially on painting, sometimes supplemented by other techniques such as sewing and embroidery. Driven by an insatiable curiosity about colour, the artist is interested in its treatment in contemporary painting, its functions, and the energy and liveliness emanating from the marriage of certain colors.

Whether through their treatment of light, their superimposition of different textures and materials, or the occasional emergence of ghostly silhouettes, her canvases lend a touch of dreaminess and poetry to the scenes they depict, questioning our habitual perception of the land. Lanthier's colourful, rich and abundant universes offer viewers a multi-sensory experience.

Source: Symposium de Baie-Saint-Paul