Marie Madore of Sutton

Marie Madore - the art odyssy continues

By. Manfried H. Starhemberg
Marie Mador had her first exhibition of paintings at age 15 in Ste Hillaire where she grew up. Now, at age 55, she has had hundreds more inbetween, had large studios, thelaste in Ste Armand, but two years ago she elected to move to Sutton. Why?
"I love the energy of this town, there are dozens of fine srtists, great studios and galleris, outdoor sculpture and music. Best of all, I wanted to live in a place where I do not have to use my car for my daily shopping and chores. I can walk to the grocery stores and the post office, I can buy paints one building over from my new studio, I live on the upper floor of one of the newest galleries in town and the local depaneur is three houses away".
If Marie wishes to do any banking, the bank is across the street and if whe wants a good breakfast, the local family restaurant is next to the bank. This is what makes Sutton such a lovely place to live.
Marie has done a lot throughout her artistic life. She studies six years at U.Quam, has worked in wood sculpture and textile, pottery and for many years has specialized in "estampes", her huge collection of hand made prints.

Beautiful painted objects like the suitcase pictured above abound in her studio/home. She attributes a lot of her instinctive creativity to the late famed sculptor Jordi Bonet of Ste Hilair,e who was an early mentor and afforded her access to his studios and showed her work. Yet, earlier influences were her grandmother, an other painter in her family, and various family members who were engaged in the arts and crafts metier. Her rural upbringing is reflected in large canvasses of haybales, or the Sutton river, simple wooden benches one might find under the apple tree in the front yard at a farm house, or stunningly beautiful portraits of people, always done in a muted style with generous but not overpowering colors and a gently texture of her oils, which shows the mastery of the brush, not the so often overly done appellation of spatula and knife, prevalent in opl paintings by people who do not know how to caress a canvas with the gentle time consuming work of badger brush on canvas.

From her large upstairs balcony which abounds with grapevines and has an interesting view of mature trees, a lovely swimming pool and the skyscappe of the Sutton firehouse with it's hose tower in the left, she can already envision another painting or two. There is a large grapevine sneaking across to an old apple tree of the right and the bright green foliage of the grapes contrast beautifully with the little apples glowing in the afternoon light. She sees beauty everywhere and very soon, some of the things she sees every day in Sutton, vignettes overlooked by most, will surely grace one of her next canvasses.