Magazine Article, esse: Françoise Sullivan, Pastels 1996-2004

Françoise Sullivan's exhibition Pastels 1996-2004 marks the centenary of the artist's birth. Bringing together some fifty works, most of them previously unseen, it features a selection of drawings discovered by the Galerie Simon Blais team during the COVID-19 pandemic, when Sullivan's Montreal studio was being relocated. Produced using the dry pastel technique, mainly on white watercolor paper, the works on display closely reflect the formal and thematic developments in the artist's pictorial production, while at the same time constituting accomplished creations, without any preparatory character. The first, dating from around 1996, depict semi-abstract Mediterranean landscapes, echoing the great pictorial cycles of the 1980s, notably the Cretan Cycles. The second series, mostly produced in 1998 and 1999, are part of an artistic renewal, exploring plastic avenues that mark Sullivan's return to abstraction. The artist began working with dry pastel in 1996, following a trip to Greece. His first dry pastel drawings were very freely executed, depicting mainly nocturnal scenes of forests and mountains, often with strange halos of light and long cypress silhouettes. From the Cretan Cycles, they borrow rugged environments, enigmatic atmospheres and general references to Greece, without however retaining the mythical themes.