Artist Bio

Michele Cormier (she/her) is a French Canadian visual artist based in Squamish, British Columbia, Canada. She grew up in a small Acadian village along the east coast of New Brunswick. Following a 30-year career in the public service, she now works full time in her studio, returning to a practice that has long been central to her life.

Working in acrylic and mixed media, Michele draws from the textural richness of her surroundings - from rugged coastal massifs to towering cedar grove trails. Through processes of accretion, disruption, excavation, and intuitive marks, she builds layered surfaces that evolve through intention and discovery. Her work engages the overlooked textures of her environment—weathered façades, worn surfaces, and the residual marks of daily life—reframing them as sites of memory and transformation.

Michele’s compositions evolve slowly, revealing and concealing in equal measure. These surfaces hold tension between control and surrender, asking what is left behind, what is carried forward, and what quietly insists on being seen. What emerges are quiet visual records—fragments of time, presence, and change.

Michele has been developing her practice for over twenty years through a combination of formal training and independent study. Her work has been exhibited in Canada and the United States. She is also an active contributor to the arts community as a Board Member of the Touchstone Foundation for the Arts and a former President of Touchstone Gallery in Washington, DC.

Artist Statement

My practice is rooted in observation — of surfaces shaped by time, of places marked by use, exposure, and quiet endurance. I’m drawn to weathered façades, erosion, and landscape detritus, where traces of human and natural presence converge and slowly transform. These surfaces hold memory, revealing stories through layers rather than singular moments.

Working primarily in acrylic and mixed media, I build layered compositions through processes of accretion, disruption, excavation and intuitive marks enabling my work to evolve through intention and discovery. Each layer partially conceals and reveals what came before, allowing history, exploration, and presence to coexist.

My process is intuitive and iterative, guided as much by removal as by addition. Through this layering, my work holds a tension between control and surrender, permanence and impermanence. The resulting works invite a slower way of observing change — evoking an awareness of subtle shifts, embedded details, and passage of time.