Louise Laplante

I was raised in a household that reveled in its past, spending may hours listening to my parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles talk about their childhoods.  They created many images for me in their tales of eccentric neighbors, relatives visiting from Quebec (my grandparents birthplace), and the trials and pleasures of life in a very small town.  As they talked I added the visual elements which made their stories come to life.

These pictures faded as I grew up but a few years ago, prompted by reading a group of 19^th century letters I purchased on a whim, that same creation of visual elements to add to the words I read prompted the work I am now engaged in.

My paintings and drawings incorporate my love of old paper, both printed and hand written along with my interest in the past and its relevance to the present.  I use old letters, documents, books and images to create images that explore the concerns, cares and boundaries of our ancestors and how they have stayed much the same.

My panels refer back to the tradition of memory boxes or scrapbooks each assembled from dissimilar materials related only through the decision of the individual creating that page or encasing those elements behind glass in a frame.  The sheets collaged as background are selected because they refer to the same or similar ideas or concepts.   He surface is blurred with whitewash, the way memories are blurred by distance and the elements of the image assembled on that ground.  This assembly of materials broadens the idea of “painting” beyond the brush stroke and brings it closer to the layering that is more reflective of the mind’s process of memory making.  The surface is encaustic, used as the final collaged element, to act as the “preservative” what is underneath, and to provide that final blurring of the image.  

Each drawing is done in two stages.  I select and collage the paper, then create a motif to place on that sheet.  The selection of the image is suggested by the words on the sheets I have used to form the ground.  The resulting may be ironic, humorous or nostalgic.