Louise D\u00e9ry:<\/strong> Fran\u00e7oise, do you remember how you first came into contact with painting?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Fran\u00e7oise Sullivan:<\/strong> I first had the opportunity to discover painting through books. One of the most wonderful presents that I received as a child was from my aunts: a complete history of art that started with the Lascaux caves and went all the way to the twentieth century. A bit later, I started going to the museum that wasn\u2019t far from where I lived. And when I was around twelve or thirteen and going to school at the Convent of the Sacred Heart, I took art classes at the Hochelaga Convent on Wednesdays after school and Saturdays mornings. My aunt Marguerite was a nun and taught painting there. She would have us draw and would show slides of Impressionist works. She was a cheerful person with a youthful spirit and had a large studio. This impressed me. At the same time, I took dance classes, which I also loved. Later on, I decided to go to the \u00c9cole des beaux-arts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n LD:<\/strong> Your professors showed their appreciation of your work from the start, as you won the Prix Maurice-Cullen at the year-end exhibition in 1941. Did this promising beginning encourage you to become a painter?<\/p>\n\n\n\n FS:<\/strong> This led me to make a number of paintings during the summer. I spent a few days with my friend Louise Renaud at her family cottage and came back home with nine paintings! While out in the rowboat there, we saw two young Indigenous girls, and I immediately wanted to paint their portraits. After getting their mother\u2019s permission, I started working, trying to paint in solid colours without modelling\u2014a rule I gave myself and rigorously followed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n LD:<\/strong> These highly colourful portraits on cardboard have a lot of character and freshness, just like the portrait titled Le New-Yorkais, M. Hewitt<\/em>, also from this period.<\/p>\n\n\n\n FS:<\/strong> Yes, and in the same style, I also painted Autoportrait au visage barbouill\u00e9<\/em>, then Portrait de Madeleine Marois<\/em> and a few others that summer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n LD:<\/strong> With their thick lines and contours and bold colours, these works are consistent with Fauvism. Later, in May 1943, you participated in the exhibition Les Sagittaires<\/em> at Galerie Dominion, an initiative of Guy Viau and Paul-\u00c9mile Borduas, who wanted to showcase young members of the Contemporary Arts Society.<\/p>\n\n\n\n FS:<\/strong> It was a truly stimulating time. I had met Borduas in his studio the previous year through Pierre Gauvreau. He showed us his famous gouaches, which he was working on for his exhibition at the Ermitage in 1942, as well as several portraits. These were defining moments for me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n LD:<\/strong> You were a very active member of the young generation attending the \u00c9cole des beaux-arts, which you graduated from in 1945. Then you stopped painting for at least thirty years. Why?<\/p>\n\n\n\n FS:<\/strong> As you know, dance was another great passion of mine. I left Montr\u00e9al and went to New York to experience the trends developing around Martha Graham, Franziska Boas, and the New Dance Group. Yet, I remained interested in painting. This is why I organized, in Boas\u2019s studio, the first New York exhibition of the Automatistes, titled The Borduas Group<\/em> (January 1946). I wanted to make known the work of my Montr\u00e9al friends, and I assembled paintings by Pierre Gauvreau, Marcel Barbeau, Jean-Paul Mousseau, Jean Paul Riopelle, and Fernand Leduc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n LD:<\/strong> None of your paintings were in it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n FS:<\/strong> No. At the time, I was only doing dance. I kept in touch with what the Automatistes were painting and also discovered other painters. My friend Louise Renaud, who had moved to New York before me, was a nanny for gallery owner Pierre Matisse\u2019s family; that\u2019s where I was able to see works by Surrealist painters who had relocated to the United States because of the war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n LD:<\/strong> You moved back to Montr\u00e9al in 1947. What motivated this?<\/p>\n\n\n\n FS:<\/strong> There was such high intensity in the group around Borduas, and I took part in many activities. I created choreographies and made Danse dans la neige<\/em> in February 1948. The imminent publication of the Refus global<\/em> manifesto gave us momentum. The period after it came out in August 1948 was very difficult, particularly for Borduas. The following year, I married Paterson Ewen, a painter whose work continues to fill me with wonder, and then I had my four sons. I worked extremely hard to create major dance shows for television in the 1950s and made sculptures in the 1960s. Then, I experimented with new trends: conceptual art, photography, performance, and so on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The validity of traditional disciplines was being reconsidered in many milieus, and the death of painting was even being proclaimed. This shook me up.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n LD:<\/strong> We need to jump in time to the 1980s to pick up on your painting with series such as Tondos<\/em>, Divins serpents<\/em>, Cycles cr\u00e9tois<\/em>, and Prom\u00e9th\u00e9e<\/em>. It was relative to these works that we met in 1988, after which I curated an exhibition of them for the Mus\u00e9e du Qu\u00e9bec (now the Mus\u00e9e national des beaux-arts du Qu\u00e9bec) in 1993. This body of work has mythological undertones that are, in my opinion, highly revealing of your interest in the history of civilizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n FS:<\/strong> It\u2019s important to mention that I travelled to Greece during those years. I shared a house there and went regularly. I was in love with the country, its landscapes, its people, their imagination. Painting offered a means to evoke all that. It lived in my dreams. Once back in Montr\u00e9al, I couldn\u2019t continue in the same way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n LD:<\/strong> This happened around 1995 with an impressive production of monochromes, \u00c9clats de rouge<\/em>, exhibited at Galerie de l\u2019UQAM in 1998, and then the remarkable series Hommages<\/em>, exhibited at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in 2003. This makes me think of the video documentation of an extremely surprising performance that I discovered in your archives in 2015 and that, I believe, prefigures the emergence of abstraction in your painting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n FS:<\/strong> You\u2019re talking about the video in which I\u2019m sitting on the floor surrounded by newspaper pages, and I\u2019m covering them with solid reds, yellows, and blues, and eventually I paint directly on my arm and hand. I don\u2019t remember this work in detail, but I believe that a journalist and friend of mine, Madeleine Dubuc, filmed me.r sa place, entre la performance et la peinture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n LD:<\/strong> According to what you told me, this performance was never executed in public. I did a lot of research to date it and identify the location where it was filmed, based on the assumption that the camera belonged to V\u00e9hicule Art, of which you were a founding member. And when I spoke with you about it, I suggested that it was the colour that called to you, that wanted to find its place between performance and painting.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n FS:<\/strong> Yes, and this inspired the title Et la couleur revient<\/em> (c. 1978). I tried all kinds of things during that period. I\u2019ve never made anything else similar to it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n LD:<\/strong> This performance combines two aspects of your work: a relationship with the body, when you paint on your skin in a gesture close to body art, and communication, which is obstructed by the colour. There is a connection with the obstructed windows and doors that you made in the 1970s, and I also see a link with censorship. Let us not forget Corridart<\/em> (1976), a moment in our history when freedom of expression was threatened as the mayor at the time ordered the destruction of the works made for this major outdoor exhibition for the Olympic Games.<\/p>\n\n\n\n FS:<\/strong> Still today, artists\u2019 works can be misunderstood and such acts of censorship are always a risk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n LD:<\/strong> For over thirty years, your painting has remained decidedly non-figurative, abstract, and often monochromatic.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n FS:<\/strong> Yes. I make large paintings in vibrant colours, inserting mostly geometric forms that slide into the coloured ground. It is difficult work; I have to let the painting decide. It is a total commitment of the body and mind. The canvas becomes a space of freedom but also of exigency. The gaze is tense; the body, active.<\/p>\n\n\n\n LD: <\/strong>Your painting has received a great deal of attention in many exhibitions while your best-known work, Danse dans la neige<\/em> (1948), continues to be celebrated. I know that you wish to take the opportunity of this interview to reaffirm the support you received from Riopelle when you created it.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n FS:<\/strong> Yes, exactly. At a party at Pierre and Claude Gauvreau\u2019s mother\u2019s house, on February 26, 1948, I saw Riopelle, who had just returned from Paris. He asked about what I was working on, and I told him about a choreographic experiment that I had done on the shore of the St. Lawrence River (in Les Escoumins, 1947) and about my desire to create another one in the snow. He was renting a small house in the countryside at the time, near Mont-Saint-Hilaire. He blurted out, \u201cCome over tomorrow!\u201d In the morning, I gathered boots and warm clothes and took the bus to his place. In the evening, we talked about the project, and the next day, Riopelle came to the mountain with me, bringing my camera. He filmed me while his friend Maurice Perron followed us and took photographs. Although the film has been lost, Perron\u2019s images have survived and are famous mainly because I reproduced them in a limited-edition photobook that I published and distributed in 1977. I can say that Riopelle\u2019s confidence in my project stimulated me intensely. His spontaneity was a significant source of motivation, and what we experienced that day was magical.<\/p>\n\n\n\n LD:<\/strong> It\u2019s fascinating to hear you talk about this creative moment that influenced your relationship with art in terms of an availability to the present, the virtues of spontaneous exploration, and the decisive instant. I see interesting connections in this with your painting over the past forty years. The painting is made in the present moment; it starts, in a way, at ground zero; and it is open to the unconscious. You\u2019ve told me that you often dream your paintings. So, what are you dreaming of right now, Fran\u00e7oise? What are your next projects?<\/p>\n\n\n\n FS:<\/strong> I will exhibit several watercolours at Galerie Simon Blais in a few months and participate in the Manif d\u2019art, curated by Didier Morelli, in spring 2026. In the studio, stretched canvases await me, and ideas are germinating. It\u2019s always an agonizing and exhilarating feeling all at once. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":268567,"template":"","categories":[887,883],"numeros":[7491],"disciplines":[],"statuts":[],"checklist":[],"auteurs":[3230],"artistes":[5755],"thematiques":[],"type_chronique":[511],"class_list":["post-268583","chronique","type-chronique","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-column","category-interviews","numeros-114-abstractions-en","auteurs-louise-dery-en","artistes-francoise-sullivan-en","type_chronique-tete-a-tete-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/chronique\/268583","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/chronique"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/chronique"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/268567"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=268583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=268583"},{"taxonomy":"numeros","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/numeros?post=268583"},{"taxonomy":"disciplines","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/disciplines?post=268583"},{"taxonomy":"statuts","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/statuts?post=268583"},{"taxonomy":"checklist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/checklist?post=268583"},{"taxonomy":"auteurs","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/auteurs?post=268583"},{"taxonomy":"artistes","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artistes?post=268583"},{"taxonomy":"thematiques","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/thematiques?post=268583"},{"taxonomy":"type_chronique","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/type_chronique?post=268583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/114_CHR_Dery_Francoise-Sullivan_PortraitduneenfantautochtoneauLacOuimet-no.1_1941-cut-scaled.jpg\")
Portrait d\u2019une enfant autochtone au lac Ouimet<\/em>, no 1, 30 \u00d7 28,5 cm, 1941.
Photo: courtesy of the artist<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n![\"Francoise-Sullivan\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/114_CHR_Dery_Francoise-Sullivan_DSC6719-scaled.jpg\")
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![\"Franc\u0327oise-Sullivan_Rouge-terre_2004\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/114_CHR_Dery_Francoise-Sullivan_Rouge-terre_2004-scaled.jpg\")
Rouge-terre<\/em>, 183 \u00d7 183 cm, 2004.
Photo: courtesy of the artist, Collection d\u2019\u0153uvres d\u2019art de l\u2019UQAM<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n![\"Fran\u00e7oise](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/114_CHR_Dery_Francoise-Sullivan_Etlacouleurrevient_1978_02.jpg\")
Et la couleur revient<\/em>, video stills, 1978.
Editing: Wayne Cullen
Photos: courtesy of the artist<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n![\"Fran\u00e7oise](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/114_CHR_Dery_Francoise-Sullivan_Etlacouleurrevient_1978_01.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n![\"Francoise-Sullivan\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/114_CHR_Dery_Francoise-Sullivan_DSC7126-scaled.jpg\")