A Curatorial Review by Despina Tunberg

The defining technical innovation of the practice is the combination of bold acrylic color with the fragility of tissue paper, achieving a myriad of textures, unexpected patterns, and varied translucent effects. After working with watercolors for nearly two decades,
Boisclair discovered the unlimited freedom of abstract expression through vibrant acrylics, guided by intuition, weaving together the spiritual and material worlds with color, texture, and light. This transition — from the controlled transparency of watercolor to the layered, collage-like complexity of acrylic on tissue — is not merely a change of
medium. It is a fundamental expansion of pictorial possibility. Tissue paper, embedded into wet acrylic, wrinkles, resists, absorbs, and transmits light in ways that no
conventional painted surface can replicate. Where the paint pushes through, it pools and
saturates; where the tissue resists, it lifts and crinkles, catching light at its edges. The result is a surface that is simultaneously painting and relief, translucent and opaque, spontaneous and structural.

The jury at the Naples Prize for Contemporary Art recognized this quality with particular insight, citing Mer agitée / Stormy Seas for its "lyrical and gestural power in line with the latest research of abstraction," comparing it — at a very different and personal pace — to
the work of Richter, noting the way colors overlap each other in "a kind of liberation of energy" and a "unique representation of maritime storm: magnetism and fear." This is accurate critical observation. Boisclair's seascapes and atmospheric landscapes carry a genuine elemental charge — the sensation of weather, of light on moving water, of the
atmosphere before and after a storm — rendered through a technique that is itself governed by forces partially beyond the artist's control, much as weather is.

Her paintings are guided by intuition, each work created from the soul, celebrating the beauty of the creative spirit that connects us all. That spiritual dimension is not incidental — it is structurally present in the work. The light that filters through layered tissue paper has something of the quality of light through a stained glass window: it does not
illuminate from without but emanates from within, giving the surfaces a warmth and radiance that purely opaque painting cannot achieve. Color in these works does not sit on the surface; it glows through it.

1Boisclair's abstract landscapes have been shown in numerous exhibitions across Canada,
Europe, and the US, and her paintings are held in many private and public collections worldwide. She received "Best of Show" at an exhibition in Ferrara, Italy, and second
place at the Naples Prize for Contemporary Art 2013. Her work has been shown at Art Expo New York, Red Dot Miami, and the Carrousel du Louvre in Paris.

Stylistic Placement

Within the contemporary Canadian abstract landscape tradition, Boisclair occupies a
distinctive position — one shaped by the lyrical abstraction of the Quebec school and the atmospheric ambitions of painters who treat landscape as emotional rather than topographical subject. Her work sits comfortably alongside artists in the international
stream of gestural abstract expressionism, while the tissue paper technique gives it a
formal singularity that separates it from the mainstream. The Richter comparison made by the Naples jury is illuminating: like Richter's abstractions, her works hover between
the controlled and the surrendered, between intention and accident, between the atmospheric and the pure. It is a productive tension, and it gives the work its life.

From a Collector's Eye
Boisclair's paintings are among the most technically distinctive available within contemporary Canadian abstraction — the tissue paper process creates surfaces that cannot be mistaken for anyone else's work, and that distinction matters deeply in a
collection. The translucent, luminous quality of the surfaces means these paintings
respond beautifully to changing light conditions throughout the day, making them genuinely alive presences in a living or working space. For collectors drawn to work that carries spiritual warmth alongside formal sophistication, and for those specifically
building in Canadian contemporary abstraction, Boisclair's practice — recognized
internationally with major prizes and represented in collections worldwide — represents a compelling and well-founded opportunity.