Michèle Gagnan – The artist biography

To write his own artist biography is, in a certain way a challenge since a multitude of factors intervene to orient our life, and eventually develop our potential capacities. However, drawing and painting have always been part of my life since I was very young. I am born in Paris. My father, Emile Gagnan, also a painter, was engineer in the Liquid Air Company. Among his creations, he was the one who initially conceived the "Aqualung", the diving system which has been at the origin of the success of Jacques Cousteau. My father was painting portraits and landscapes.

Very early in my life, at school, I enjoyed making small drawings, crazy sketches on any piece of paper I could find.

In 1939, the war is breaking out. We are in vacation in Bretagne when it happens. We hurry up to come back to Paris. The German army invades France. My parents look for a shelter of peace in the country and finally buy an abandoned presbytery in a small village, St-Lubin, near Houdan... a large garden, beautiful paths, a cross in stone. I draw. My mother is pregnant and delivers a beautiful brother, Dominique. But my father is soon called to serve in the army (DCA). Then he leaves the crying family. German invade France, defeat is inevitable. Soldiers escape. My father contacts my mother, ask her to drive the family (Dominique was only few months old) to the south where he will join us as soon as possible. I will never forget the spectacle of this exode… cars, carts drawn by horses, accidents on the side of the road. My father finally join us, and we reach all of us Narbonne and Ressac where friends receive us very kindly. The south of France: new nature, new drawings. After few weeks, Petain signs the armistice, we come back to Paris where a new life starts, a life of restrictions in many aspects, under German occupation. Let us be silent about the horrors of nazism, deportation, bombardments, that I am unable to forget.

Finally, the allied arrived and forced the progressive departure of German solders. I remember the liberation, the hysteric joy of the French ! But the life was not any more as before war.

In 1948, the Gagnan family, tired by material restrictions and a certain morosity among the French, decided to move to Canada, a country of peace, kindness and simplicity. My father was offered in Montreal an office with laboratory facilities, technician availability and travel expenses paid by the Liquid Air Co. He could not reject this opportunity. The whole family migrated to Canada, through England where my mother had friends. Knowing my passion, they offered me a drawing book. What a marvelous coincidence ! I immediately started to use it. Indeed, in a street of London, I will never forget how amazed I was in front of a show polisher, a spectacle never seen in France. Immediately, I drawed the polisher, waxing the shoes of an elegant sir who was standing up, reading of his newspaper.

After a wonderful travel on the Queen Mary, the arrival to New York, and finally to Canada. Amazement in front of nature, the landscapes with their numerous and peaceful lakes, the red leaves in autumn. Using my famous drawing book, I started to draw, to paint either with aquarelle or oil paint in tubes as those my father was using. At school, the College Marie de France where my parents inscribed me at our arrival, I had fun drawing my colleagues and even professors (I still have the portrait of Mrs Dussaigne) and this without their knowledge for sure !

Later on, in 1963, I was at the time a spouse and a mother, I met Prince Edward Island. I fell in love immediately. New paintings, landscape of the ocean, the small harbour of North Rustico.

In 1976, following a very traumatizing event in my life, my children and I moved to Paris, in the Quartier Latin, for a sabbatical year. It has been an unforgettable experiment, in any aspects: academic, intellectual, artistic and human. Back to Montreal, at the end of 1977, I decided to contact my Canadian friends by sending them Christmas cards that I would paint my self. But what type of painting ? I invented then a crazy type of technique, that I would name automatism or semi automatism. This technique consists in obtaining interesting shapes of the enamel paint by spreading small amount of solvent, and then moving the paint so that the colors slide, creating lines with fascinating shapes, often suggesting landscapes that I would have never been able to imagine myself ! When such landscapes appeared (which, indeed was not always the case), I dried the paint, cut the interesting sections and stick them on white cards. This way, I have been able to send a multitude of Christmas cards to friends, with small original paintings. When, thereafter, I visited those friends, I found my small paintings framed on the walls, or setting up on the kitchen windows. I decided, very grateful, to develop my technique. These experiences have been at the origin of many new paintings of various sizes, and two exhibitions at the Galeries Marie-Anne in 2002 and Mozaik-Art (2004) in Montreal.

In an attempt to integrate myself in a group of artists and valorize a number of them in the medical profession, I created in 2001, the Association des Médecins Artistes du Québec (AMAQ) and organized a first exhibition at the Mount Stephen Club. Even if this exhibition had a certain success, the association did not survived, possibly because the heavy load of work of my colleagues.

Finally, recently, I had the pleasure to be integrated into an artist society of Town of Mont-Royal, TRAM, which regroups fifteen adherents, most of them being painters. Art is the source of great pleasure!

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