MARTIN BLANCHET

Martin Blanchet is a Quebec artist born in St.Emile de Suffolk in the Ottawa region.

Beginning as a graphic arts student at Ottawa’s Algonquin College, he quickly turns his attention to painting.  Largely self-taught, Martin Blanchet perfected his craft as an oil painter with the likes of Louis Boekhout and Louis Robichaud.

Greatly inspired by nature in the Laurentians and Ottawa regions, Martin Blanchet’s paintings exude the great outdoors and the intimate atmosphere of Quebec’s woods and valleys.

As a painting poet, Martin Blanchet is just as inspired by life in Montreal.  He depicts its urban landscapes in massive, lyrical works that sing the beauty and ugliness of big city life.  He is, at the same time, just as apt at using a small painting that shows the intimacy of life in the same urban setting.

Fiercely independent, Martin Blanchet is dedicated to his muse on his own terms, shaping his art following a greatly personal view of beauty and perfection.

Present in major galleries since the mid-1990s, Blanchet’s work is also a fixture within many private and public collections.

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LYNDA SCHNEIDER-GRANATSTEIN

Lynda Schneider Granatstein was born in Montreal in 1954. She began her studies in art at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts with Arthur Lismer, a member of the Group of Seven (1967-1970), continuing with Concordia University (1972, 1980) and the Saidye Bronfman Centre (1976-1979, 1987-1989), where she specialized in etching techniques and collagraph printmaking.

Concurrently, she received a B.A. (Psychology) in 1976 and a Master’s in Education (Psychological Counselling) in 1979 from McGill University and continued with a specialization in Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy at the Montreal General Hospital in 1980. Her professional development studies include photo etching technique with Doreen Lindsay, S.B.C. (1993), and pastel and oil portrait technique with Daniel Greene, N.A., New Jersey (1996), as well as traditional Balinese painting technique by Ubud master painter, Ketut Parmita, of Bali (2001).

Extensive artistic study allows Lynda to give free rein to explore other forms of expression such as stream of consciousness writing which is incorporated through handwritten text in her work. Her mixed media work combines various uses of metal and collagraph plate etchings, all forms of paper collage, as well as oil and pastel. The resulting maturity renders her art rich, bright, colourful, lively—always at the service of beauty and introspection.

Lynda Schneider Granatstein is represented in Quebec by Le Balcon d’Art in St. Lambert, the West End Gallery in Montreal, and la Galerie d’art Solange Lebel in Drummondville; in Ontario by the Towne Square Galley in Oakville; in Alberta by the Diana Paul Galleries in Calgary and in New York by the 32 Fine Arts Gallery. She is guided and her work is distributed by Chantal Beauchamp from Imagin’Art agency.

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CHUI WANG