Lina Vandal
Born in Montreal in 1952.
Introduced very early to the visual arts by an architect father, she frequented
throughout her childhood the Saturday morning classes offered at the École des Beaux-arts
from Montreal. Subsequently, her curiosity and her passion for the Arts
allowed her to explore over the years a multitude of forms of expression
as diverse as weaving, ceramics, modeling, drawing,
painting, dance, theater and circus arts.
It was in 1999, after a career in advertising, that she decided to devote herself
more particularly in drawing and painting by signing up for workshops
of live models at the Saydie Bronfman Center. The human body and face
quickly become the central subject of her research and her
interest, because of the richness of what they evoke and the intensity of
the emotion they arouse in her.
She sees in the human body a place of expression carrying several
dualities: masculine/feminine, living/non-living, subject/object, shadow/light,
strength/fragility, interiority/environment, resistance/abandonment,
singularity/plurality.
Her paintings seek to represent the human in it’s imperfect beauty,
mysterious and spiritual by placing it in dreamlike environments,
unreal or not clearly defined but which often evoke landscapes and
towns she frequented. She paints raw textures, often
optical illusion, from which she brings out bodies or faces, most
time evoking a certain ambiguity. Ambiguity of place, genre,
time, intention, leaving the observer the freedom to interpret as he pleases
the story presented to him.
I am fascinated by the visual plurality of
big cities that I like to explore on foot when I
visit them. I am very attached to my neighborhood
Mile end, a colorful and effervescent district.
A neighborhood in
mutation whose nature intrigues me. Her
infrastructure and urban markers are
tattooed, scratched, sometimes even fractured and
silently bear witness to the passage of time
and humans. An environment constantly in
movement, an enigmatic environment that
resonate with me and that I take pleasure in
reinterpreting in my own way. »
She uses acrylic, pigments, charcoal, pastels, collage and
spray cans (mixed media) on canvas. She also transfers onto canvas
images that she has created and reworked, such as photos or drawings. She likes to draw, which explains the use of
charcoal to draw faces and bodies.
She studied with Sophie Jodoin, Jacques Clément, Olivier Longpré and JeanLouis Émond at the Saydie Bronfman School in Montreal from 1999 to 2006.
Installed for 7 years in a Mile End workshop, she devotes herself fulltime to her artwork.