Nomade bleue was created by the artist for the 20th anniversary exhibition of the Café de la Grave, the cultural heart of the Islands. Over time, this former general store has become an institution, a place where sailors, artists, visitors and locals gather.
Each section of this monumental work represents the artist’s travels between Asia and the Magdalen Islands. At the end of the 1990s, Lemay settled in Asia, where he mounted a number of exhibitions in Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia and Singapore. In these distant lands, he also learned the ancient technique of lacquer as well as bronze casting. Asia and the Islands were both central to the artist’s pictorial process and Nomade bleue links these two artistic worlds.