Micheline Beauchemin Painter-Weaver

Micheline Beauchemin is best known for her public installations, especially for her monumental tapestries and theatre curtains. Examples include the curtain in the Grande Salle of the Théâtre Maisonneuve at Place des Arts in Montréal (1963-1967) and the stage curtain of the National Arts Centre in Ottawa (1966-1969). Beauchemin transformed traditional tapestry into a sophisticated work that required links between artists, decorators, architects and engineers and their social environment. She is also famous for her works of embroidery, stained glass, collages, costumes and paintings.

 

For Micheline Beauchemin, the process of artistic development has always been free spirited and continuous. Her passionate pursuit of creative expression has generated self-directed study and the mastery of several crafts in many different parts of the world. She experimented with new techniques and varied materials, including metallic yarns, natural and synthetic threads and glass beads.

When she became interested in the creation of theatre curtains, there wasn’t the technology nor the opportunity to do such large-scale weaving at that time in Canada. Undeterred, Beauchemin travelled to Japan, where artisans working on the wall restoration of the Imperial Palace introduced her to the craft of large-scale weaving and also to Japanese fibres.