Marie-Doris has been painting and showing her work since 1992. Trained in an intuitive approach to drawing and painting, for several years now she has been fascinated by the techniques of the great masters at the fine arts school Mission Renassaince in Montreal.

These techniques have helped her to enrich her own artistic language. She has also studied color and painting with artist Francine Labelle in Montreal. Previously, she created a line of ready-to-wear women’s clothing and bed linens, all hand-painted. For 17 years she exhibited her creations at salons in Montreal, Quebec City, Ottawa and Toronto.

Her passion for artistic creation, her dynamism and her highly-developed organizational sense served her well in the establishment of the ÉCOLE D’ÉTÉ, arts et métiers d’art de Mont-Laurier in 1998. She worked for seven years in this unique setting combining creation and exploration. She now organizes workshops where the unique expression of each participant is recognized and valued.

Marie-Doris Valois in gallery

“A landscape rendered by spontaneous figurative strokes, a piece of live Nature that dances and sings at the touch of the artist… this is what my work is about. I like to transpose and reinvent what I see, what I feel. By my perception of things, I renew the landscape that I have appropriated. My work seeks to show life in all its movement.I leave myself open to the effects of the light as it falls on a particular element, to the play of its shadows…

A rapid stroke of the brush, elaborate colors inspired by Nature, my constant source of inspiration, plunge the spectator into a visual poem.These same colors, with their naïve dimensions and connotations, find their place spontaneously in the composition. The dabs and splashes applied to the canvas become masses of color that assume recognizable shapes:the subject is figurative without erasing completely the trace of the strokes that gave it life. Like reality, the observer’s perceptions change, according to the mood, or to the light.

My technique is inevitably based on early as well as more recent training and practice. Beyond this, I feel the influence of several contemporary figurative artists. The works of the great masters have also inspired and nourished my artistic development.

By exploring and experimenting outside the bounds of a preconceived visual notion, I aspire to a personal, original style. By keeping my feet on the ground and my head in the clouds of my imagination, I hope to take the spectatoron a trip to a world where anything and everything is possible, the world where I explore the instantaneous of the changing image.”

Marie-Doris Valois

Curriculum Vitae

Selected Solo Exhibitions
2006-07 Paysage du Québec, Théâtre des 4 Sœurs, St-André-Avellin QC
2006-07-08 Le paysage d’ici et d’ailleurs, Funérarium A. Ouellette, Mont-Laurier QC
2006 Restaurant-Gallery Robino’s, San Isidro, Costa Rica
2003 Les Musiciens, Café Saint Chasles, Mont-Laurier QC
2003 Jam de monde, Café Saint Chasles, Mont-Laurier QC

Selected Group Exhibitions
2010 UNLEASHED, Petley Jones Gallery, Vancouver BC
2010 The Road Less Travelled, Petley Jones Gallery, Vancouver BC
2007 Juried show at the Maison des Arts et de la Culture of Saint-Faustin QC
2006 Arbutus Gallery, Sidney BC
2006 Laroche Fine Art Gallery, Sidney BC
2004-7 Exposition Indisciplinée, group show to benefit the Centre d’Exposition, Maison de la Culture, Mont-Laurier QC
2002 municipal library of Mont-Laurier QC, Balad’Art event, engraving
2001 Massé, Mont-Laurier QC, Balad’Art event, painting
1998 Portrait de famille, Belgo Building, Montreal QC
1997 La Couleur: Dialogue Avec L’émotion, Gallery 1040, Montreal QC

Education
2002-6 l’École des Beaux-Arts Mission Renaissance
2002-4 Apprenticeship with Clarence Bourgoin; Landscape with Françoise Sullivan; The Art of Abstraction with Dominique Sarrazin; Picture, Space and Color
1998 Painting session and apprenticeship with Seymour Segal
1998 Art Therapy training with Diane Petit
1992-7 Painting and design course – Studio of Francine Labelle

Awards
2008 First Place in Painting – Competition of the Maison des Arts et de la Culture de St-Faustin QC
2008 painting “Casse-Croûte Chez Mo-nik” chosen as cover of the recipe book “Saint-Élie à Table, d’Hier à Aujourd’hui”
2007 painting “L’essouflement” chosen by Playwrights Canada Press as cover of the book “August, an Afternoon in the Country”
2006-8 Chosen for Benefit Auction of the Écomusée du Fier Monde, Montréal QC

Participation in Other Events
2008 Selected: Symposium Art et Passion de Sainte-Julie QC
2007-8 Festival International de Racour, Belgium
2007-8 Selected: Painting Symposium, Sainte-Flore QC
2006-8 Selected: Painting Symposium, Kamouraska QC
Painting and Sculpture Symposium of Sainte-Rose, Rose-Art, Laval QC
Festiv’art, Frelighsburg QC
2004-8 Rendez-vous des Artistes, Saint-Léonard NB
2006 Painting Symposium of Rosemère QC
2006 Festival Arts et Reflets, Château Richer QC
2002-4 Art Teachers’ Show at L’École D’été, Arts et Métiers d’Art, Mt-Laurier QC
1997 Benefit Auction of The Happy Couple Foundation, Château Dufresne, Montreal

Copyright Petley Jones Gallery
2245 Granville Street Vancouver, BC