Karole Marois

WIND AND Water - May 3 OPENING

"I am intrigued with the concept that water has a memory. The water carries evidence of every touch, every breath of all lifeforms that comes in contact with it. This trail we humans leave behind flows downstream towards a sea filled with memories.

As a figurative artist, I am passionate about finding ways to express our profound emotional connection with water. In the last several years, I have been experimenting with transparency, where the waterscape can be seen through the figures in my paintings. Transparent figures are meant to express our interconnectedness with water, but they also evoke themes of memory, longing, spirituality, transience, loss and hope.

The figures in my work are based on people who share my life, but sometimes they are drawn from memory or purely imagined. I paint with acrylics on preferably large formats. Working large while standing up allows me to create flow and rhythm in the wind and waves. The horizon line is an important element in most of my waterscapes. It not only adds stability and depth to the composition, but it also stands for infinite possibilities.

Water is therapeutic, it is healing. It is the reason I moved my studio to the shores of Lake Ontario. Water has become the central theme of my body of work, and perhaps an obsession." – Karole Marois

about the artist

Karole Marois, originally from Ottawa, is a Canadian figurative painter living on the shore of Lake Ontario in Prince Edward County.

A Fine Arts graduate of the Ontario College of Art and Design in Toronto, she also holds a diploma from the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence Italy. Her early exposure to the original artworks of the Renaissance masters significantly influenced the direction of her art.

Karole’s specialty in painting the human figure and her sensitive ability to capture a person’s character allowed her to work as a portraitist, a portrait teacher and a courtroom artist while pursuing a career as a professional artist.

For many years, she divided her time between painting large heritage murals for the National Museums and Parks Canada, and exhibiting her own personal artwork in galleries and museums nationally. Her paintings can be found in private and public collections in Canada, the US and Europe.

Two of her large multipanel figurative installations, inspired by an art residency experience with the Canadian Forces Artist Program in 2005, are now in the collections of the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa and the City Hall of Apeldoorn in the Netherlands.

“The universal human condition is the fundamental theme in my work. Combining my passion for depicting the human form and a lifelong love of nature, my paintings focus on our deep connection with water to express ideas of harmony, togetherness, love and emotional survival”.

Karole paints with acrylics on preferably large surfaces, alternating between opacity and transparency, merging detailed areas with unfinished passages. She uses flow and movement to explore her subject matter in greater depth. A swimmer, sailor and overall waterlover, she is inspired by the beauty and power of water and feels strongly about the importance of protecting the health of our bodies of water.

Karole has received a number of grants from the Ontario Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts, and continues to display her work in public exhibitions that sometimes combine poetry and painting.