Monique Crépault is a Canadian artist based in Montreal and Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.
A graduate in visual arts and scenography (National Theatre School of Canada), she has created tempera paintings, prints, sculptures and land art installations. She divides her time between her studios in Montreal and Mexico.
MŌ is her artistic signature since 2017, when she started using acrylic, a medium she has been exploring since.
The nude is the main subject of MŌ's art, which she uses as a director uses the actors, to create an atmosphere, to tell a story open to interpretation, in a very distinct contemporary figurative style.
Artists such as Vermeer, Brueghel the Elder, Rembrandt, as well as Edward Munch, Andrew Whyett, Matisse, Gauguin and, closer to us, David Hockney and Katherine Bradford are among her deepest influences.
MŌ's work speaks of the human’s need for intimacy and closeness. She uses figuration to evoke feelings of love and desire, a constant subject throughout human history.
Theatricality plays an important role in MŌ’s work, through the different sets and poses of the characters inhabiting her canvases, as if waiting for an interaction, an encounter. Reflecting mirrors, frames and windows are used as metaphors for the complexity of intimacy and desire in human relationships.
Several paintings display naked men, alone or in relationships. Viewers are often amazed when they learn that a woman painted these canvases. Artists have always been fascinated by the human body and male painters have painted women for a long time without the opposite being true. MŌ is fascinated by this largely unexplored field of discoveries.
MŌ's works are part of several collections, both private and public, and can be seen at the Galleria Dante, in Puerto Vallarta, at Galerie Art+, in Ottawa, and at her Montreal studio.
Statement
"When you paint, there is that moment when you stop because you have to, you have reached the ultimate balance of color, light and form that says something you never heard before. The feeling is so deeply exhilarating, it is why you start a new painting, again and again, to reach again that climacic point."
«Quand on peint, il y a ce moment où il faut arrêter parce qu'on a atteint un équilibre de couleurs, de lumière et de formes qui exprime quelque chose que l'on n'a jamais entendu auparavant. On ne sait jamais quand on l'atteindra, mais cette sensation est si exaltante, c'est pour ça qu'on commence un nouveau tableau, encore et encore, jusqu'à retrouver ce point climacique.»
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