ANN SAINT-GELAIS

I was born in 1950 in Saguenay in Quebec Canada and as far as I can remember I tell you about my journey...

My father, when I was a child, drew me horse heads on matchbooks and at the age of three I copied the little comic strips from the regional newspaper.

It was probably at this time that my passion for drawing and painting started to germinate in my mind. When I was eight years old, I took my first oil painting lessons on an easel at the National Exhibition Center in Saguenay, where I found myself surrounded by music and classical dance, and for me it was an awakening to the Arts. Very early in my childhood, I was introduced to music by my mother, who is a talented classical pianist. In primary and secondary school I was often given the task of decorating the blackboards which I covered with colored chalk frescoes and if there was a play on the program I was there to do the decor. ..That's how art enters definitively into his life... Subsequently I chose to study plastic art at the Cégep de Chicoutimi and a Bachelor's degree at the Université du Québec à Chicoutimi as well as a certificate in Art History. She finished her studies in 1978. In my practice, I approach several facets of the arts. Parallel to my artistic creation I work in graphic design and I carry out surface treatments as well as trompe-l'oeil in the field of art decoration. You can say that I am a multidisciplinary artist. In my career I have practiced drawing, painting, sculpture as well as trompe l'oeil, computer graphics, installation, photography and object design. In the 90s, I made installations from pieces of recovered furniture, modifying and transforming their original aspects.

For more than forty years I have been practicing the visual arts, I also taught it for fifteen years at the Center des Arts et de la Culture de Chicoutimi. In the region, my works have been exhibited at the Center National d'Exposition de Jonquière (CNE), at the Center des Arts et de la Culture de Chicoutimi, at the Musée du Saguenay-Lac-St-Jean, at the Musée Louis-Émond in Péribonka du Lac St. -Jean, at the Galerie l'Oeuvre de l'Autre in UQAC, at the Galerie Espace Virtuelle in Chicoutimi, at the Galerie l'Harmattan in Baie St-Paul, at the Galerie De Nevers in Bromont, at the Galerie Arttrax of Port Crédit in Ontario, at the Center for Contemporary Art, La Vache Noire, in Paris. Represented by the Galerie la Corniche de Chicoutimi for thirty years, I decided to act now as a free agent and to welcome my public to my studio by appointment.

During all the years of practice of my art, several collectors, in the United States, in Germany, in France and in Canada acquired my works.

influences Monet, Picasso, Miro, Riopelle, Susanne Sulivan, Joan Mitchell, Willem de Kooning, Arshile Gorky, Odilon Redon Training

1979-1980 Certificate in Art History, UQAC (University of Quebec of Chicoutimi) Saguenay, Quebec, Canada 1975-1978 Bachelor of Arts in Visual Arts from UQAC. (University of Quebec of Chicoutimi) Saguenay, Quebec, Canada