We are not just witness to these paintings but participate through Lemay’s process of visual engagement, caught up in the simple sensation of being there and multi-sensory delight. Lemay provides us with all we need to capture a universal spirit of place or a foreign experience. Intensely poetic, these pictures are suffused with a euphoric sense of joy, that comes from the way Lemay, with great sensitivity, plays with color, shape and form. The result is a greater alliterative harmony. Are there works a personification of universal love? The answer can only be yes. For Lemay’s achieves a solidarity with the subjects he depicts and the ethos that propels him to make art is profoundly humanistics at its core. Our spirit is captured, drawn into the scene and we soar through space and time to arrive at a point of creative catharsis …
Floating Thought | Revue Parcours | John K. Grande | 2001
Revue Parcours 2001
René Lemay’s paintings celebrate life. Whether it be a group of musicians, a bird in flight or a figure floating in space, the subject Lemay paints have all the cadence and joy of a ceremony. A ritual-like dance scene - a vision of musicians embarked on a journey at night in a boat - or a simple depiction of a rooster in a yard - all these scenes evoke the sens that they are part of some larger unrecorded event.
