October Artist of the Month
Meet Michelle Lavallée
“Being With Nature”
In painting her art, Michelle Lavallée follows nature for inspiration. She explores captivating scenes to paint and create on canvas. Her paintings are made on location in the moment in time that the scene happens. Each work is a unique and original expression and interpretation. Also, her art is philosophical. It is a statement of being and the present moment of her person and nature.
When the artist is ready to begin a new search in nature, she drives her car, her studio on wheels, throughout the countryside and along rural roads where she lives. The effect of the falling light on the shapes of the fields, pastures, hills, trees, vegetation, rivers, houses, form the shadows and pictorial compositions. In witnessing the preferred scene in the morning, late afternoon and the hour of sunset, she finds the view that inspires her the most to create a painting.
In summary, Michelle Lavallée is an artist who searches and works to create beauty in her painting. What helps her in this direction are her studies en plein air of the infinite variety of the effects of light, color, value and tonalities that change around the shapes in nature. These observations help to enrich her artistic knowledge, imagination, creativity and passion in her landscape painting.
Her post graduate studies at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, lead to her obtaining a Graduate Diploma in Fine Arts. Preceeding this she held a B.A. with French Major from Rivier College. Also, she obtained the Art Specialist Certificate through the Boston University School of Education and Tufts University.
As a certified art specialist and teacher, she taught art to students of all ages and ability at the Boston Museum, Pilot School, l’Ecole Bilingue and the French Association of Cambridge, Nashua and Framingham Public School, Montrose School and others.
The artist’s work has been shown in over forty-five solo exhibits including at the James McNeill Whistler Museum in Lowell, the Copley Plaza, Middlesex Savings Bank, Sapas Exhibit in Wellesley, Dover Town Library, French Library Alliance Francaise of Boston, Musée Mauvide-Genest in Québec, Loring Coleman Gallery at Concord Art Association, Artifact Gallery in New York City and many others.
Her art has been exhibited in over a hundred group and juried shows, some of which include N.A.A. shows, WSA exhibits, Concord Art, Zullo Gallery, Boston Museum School, Art Expo – New York, Amsterdam Whitney Gallery – New York City, Southern Nevada Museum of Fine Arts, the Louvre Carrousel in Paris, the “In Arte Werkkunst” Gallery in Berlin. In Italy, her art was shown at Galleria Immagini Spazio Arte in Cremona, at MeArt in Palermo and at Palazzo Velli Expo in Rome. In Spain, her art was shown at the MEAM – the European Museum of Modern Art in Barcelona.
Sixteen publications have been written about her art. Her paintings are found in private art collections, in the U.S, Canada, Europe. She is a Charter Member of the National Museum of Women in the Arts, the Wellesley Society of Artists, Concord Art Association and Visual Art Explorer and Artrinet in France.
