Timeline

Despite an omnipresent interest in artistic and cultural production Lucille Marcotte did not begin her artistic career in earnest until 2000, when she suspended her career as a trained psychologist to embark upon a degree in Visual Arts, at the University of Laval in Quebec City.

Lucille lives and works in Quebec City. From 1989, whilst completing her Masters degree in Psychology, Lucille practiced as a cognitive clinical psychologist, which she continued to run alongside her artistic career. But Lucille’s career was always combined with a number of artistic projects stretching back to her undergraduate years. Between 1972 and 1975 Lucille took part in experiments with the use of audiovisual media to create short films. In 1991-1995 she took courses on structural representation in painting, and between 1995 and 1999 Lucille attended painting workshops at the University of Laval and the Museum of Québec developing her life drawing experience and her interest in Japanese calligraphy. This diverse set of interests and experiences has undoubtedly led to the focused and iconic artistry we can see in Lucille’s work today.

After completing her degree in Visual Arts in 2002, Lucille has committed much more time to the production of her work in series for exhibition. Lucille has had a number of successful solo exhibitions in Québec, including recently at the notable Galerie Saint-Dizier. She has also appeared in a number of group exhibitions since 1998 including Journées de la Culture at the Museum of Civilisation in Québec City. Her work is on display at the Gallery of Women in Prague and at the Capitale-Assurance buildings in Québec. Lucille’s diverse career has also included her role in the Canadian-Czech Republic Cultural liaison visual arts exhibition in the Czech Republic and the production of illustrations for a book by Jacques Garneau.

Lucille’s artwork is powerfully idiosyncratic and imbued with sensual and sonar qualities. Her canvases are always depicted with the use of strong black strokes of paint portraying a body, frequently female, on white canvas. The white areas around her figures are always predominant, implying an indefinite space; one which is both a context and simultaneously a vaccum, conjuring concepts of the dreamlike and the ephemeral. Lucille’s figures are painted in an ‘unfinished’ or indefinite manor, leaving sections, and particularly the facial features, to the imagination. These absences cause the viewer to relate to the context and the figure in more emotive ways. One is asked to sense the tension and possibly the sound of the painting, through the limited referential points. Lucille’s artworks are not intended to be complete narratives with figurative clichés, they are a question and a reflection on the reality of human emotion.