The selected paintings above are acrylics and oils on canvas. Before attending Emily Carr College of Art and Design in the late ’80s, I took courses in graphic design and airbrush painting, and freelanced as a graphic designer. These early influences can be detected in some of my work.
Throughout most of my career, much of my art has embodied themes of impermanence and grief. The recurring goddess motif in my paintings came directly out of the experience of losing a child; the empty womb symbolizes the void resulting from such a profound loss. However, some viewers interpret the imagery in a more celebratory spirit – that of the excitement and fulness of pregnancy, and the creative life-force that motherhood represents.
The Talking Mask Series was part of my solo exhibition, Facing the Demon: The Agony and the Ecstasy (2008). It explores the idea that most of us wear a ‘mask’ in public so that our public persona is much different than our private one. The mouth in each painting forms one of the vowels of the alphabet, A, E, I, O, U, which represents our mechanical responses in social situations. The cheerful colours and decorative outer appearance conceal the inner sanctum of the true self.
Michelle LaRiviere 
One thought on “Abstract”