Born in Oka in 1940, Madeleine Lemire has acquired training in several courses and workshops ranging from the Montreal School of Fine Arts (1950-1960), to the École du Louvre in Paris (1965-66), through the Saidye Bronfman Centre (1986), as well as to Engram (1990). Each year, she divides her time between her workshop in the Eastern Townships in Quebec and a country where she finds warmth and light, whether it be in Provence, the south of France, Guatemala or Mexico. She has several solo and group exhibitions in private galleries in Quebec, Canada and Europe. In 1996, Madeleine Lemire was elected a Fellow of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts.
Always fond of the theme of nature, Madeleine Lemire traces, from a horizon line, a set of bushy and abstract diagonals that reveal a foreground and then a second. This has the effect of creating depth and suggesting a landscape that can still be vaguely recognized. The zones of light and deep contrasts share the space thus designed. This alternation between what is light and dark evokes for the artist "life with its dark moments interspersed with luminous periods".
The vivid momentum of the touch is supported by a gesture nevertheless parsimonious and controlled that can only be welcomed: the spontaneous movement that emanates from the works of Madeleine Lemire does not exist for the mere expression of the emotions of the one who creates. The abstract look of Lemire's oil drawings is mitigated by the judicious choice of the monochrome background mentioned above. This aeration gives the viewer the sensation of breathing by causing a back-and-forth between softness and intensity. An aesthetic that serves the artist's point well.