October Painting

BIOGRAPHY Michelle Cadreau’s lively acrylic paintings combine graphic precision with a pleasant mischievousness. Cadreau creates images of objects and patterns with impeccable cleanness, almost as if every crisp line and pure swath of color were created by a machine. The palette is candy-colored but solid, so that every shape has presence. Each painting is pared down to a main subject, presented centrally and symmetrically with a stylized lack of detail or background. Every mark is bold. For subject matter, Cadreau chooses images that are ordinary yet can represent a whole world. One canvas shows a simple acoustic guitar – a common instrument, but also a powerful symbol. Another shows the Eiffel Tower, flattened to its unmistakable ironwork. Cadreau’s work evokes icons, both religious and the kind that populate a computer desktop screen. But its overall tone of lightness carries the aesthetic into a realm all its own. Michelle Cadreau was born in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada and currently maintains a home studio in Burlington, Ontario