Carnet d’un voyage imaginaire #9

Born in Boisbriand, where she continues to live and work, Ariane Dubois holds a Bachelor’s degree in Visual Arts from Concordia University. She studied under Jean McEwen and Tom Hopkins, from whom she inherited a strong interest in pictorial materiality. She also holds a certificate in Art History, a Master’s degree in Museology from the Université de Montreal, and training in Art Education from UQAM. Since the mid-1980s, Dubois has presented her work in more than one hundred solo and group exhibitions across Canada and internationally.

Recipient of grants from the Ministry of Culture and Communications and the Quebec Arts Council, she has carried out several major projects and participated in international art fairs as well as large-scale exhibitions, including Québec en Mexico, produced by Loto-Québec at the Museo de las Artes in Guadalajara.

Throughout her career, she has been an active member of several cultural organizations, including the artist-run centers Praxis (Sainte-Thérèse) and Verticale (Laval). Within these two organizations, she successively served as administrator, secretary, and president (Praxis) on the boards of directors for nearly twenty years. She was also a member of the Quebec Museum Society, as well as a board member and acquisitions committee member for the Contemporary Art Museum of the Laurentians art collection.

Her works are part of private, public, and corporate collections in Canada and the United States, including those of the Royal Bank of Canada, the City of Laval, Loto-Québec, Promutuelle l’Abitibienne, Brookfield Properties, Caisses Desjardins, and Abitibi Consolidated.

Artistic Statement

For many years, my pictorial research has drawn inspiration from the landscape as a place of meditation. I approach its countless possibilities through a vision shaped both by my personal experience of the surrounding nature and by the literary explorations of philosopher Gaston Bachelard.

Landscape, in my work, becomes imagery at the heart of the contemplative experience. From this material reverie emerge multiple meditative variations. The site, provided the viewer is receptive, becomes a space that fosters the understanding of one’s own intimate universe. The image acts as a metaphor for states of mind. The elements—earth, water, air, and fire—find meaning in the fascination they exert on each of us.

Through their suggestive imagery, my paintings address the presence of these four primal elements, sources of underlying life, intrinsic effervescence, and introspection.