Bio

Isa Sevrain

I’m from a small place called Berson near Bor­deaux in west south France. My child­hood was infused with the cul­ture of a tra­di­tional French vil­lage, gos­sip and old stones, accor­dion “flon­flon” and Strauss waltzes with­out for­get­ting August carnival.

My par­ents ran a small trad­ing busi­ness and when I was 5 they also took over my grandfather’s vine­yard. So, alto­gether, from farm­ing to trad­ing, I devel­oped the skills of per­se­ver­ance, resource­ful­ness, qual­ity craft­man­ship, and com­mu­ni­ca­tion. At age 9 a woman painter client of my father gave me the most beau­ti­ful book I had ever seen, an illus­trated Japan­ese story-book. I think it was the main inspi­ra­tion of my child­hood, an encour­age­ment to believe in the power of express­ing my heart.

A clas­si­cal French edu­ca­tion in board­ing school intro­duced me to rebel­lion, rock’n roll, cin­ema and clas­si­cal dance. In 1982 I found myself in the “big” city of Bor­deaux. I started to go to the mime school of Philippe Bizot. For the next 5 years I worked with dif­fer­ent the­ater com­pa­nies and I took jazz and African dance classes. There I also opened up to Ara­bic cul­ture and all together to a mul­ti­cul­tural life. I added travel to my insa­tiable curios­ity to meet more and more peo­ple. In 1987 I was work­ing in Switzer­land, sav­ing to go live in the Caribbean for a while. With a last minute turn of thought, after meet­ing some Que­be­cois, I bought a ticket for Mon­treal. When I arrived in Decem­ber, I ques­tioned my san­ity. But I know now, it was meant to be. In ret­ro­spect, I feel that mov­ing to Canada has been one of the best thing that has hap­pened to me. From there I kept trav­el­ling back and forth to France via Caribbean. After a first trip in 1988 in the Okana­gan, I swore that I would come back to west­ern Canada. In 1990, I did and a new part of my life started.

For a cou­ple of years I trav­eled more still between the Gulf islands and the Yukon. In 1992 I stopped in Nanaimo and I went to Malaspina Col­lege. I took some courses in their fine art pro­gram with Ian Gar­riock and Iris Church, I also attended an E.S.L pro­gram to improve my Eng­lish. From then on I kept tak­ing courses with dif­fer­ent artists, includ­ing, Tony Onley in water­colour, Heather Spears in life draw­ing, Car­ole Ray in lino cut, and ceramic with Ian Nat­tras and Deb Tay­lor. I also kept going to life draw­ing classes which is my favorite way of learning.

My daugh­ter Del­phine was born in 1995. From 1996 to 1997 I par­tic­i­pated in many group exhi­bi­tions on the island. In 1998, I had a solo show called “peep­hole” at the Parksville Art Coun­cil. At that time I also decided to give a try at craft, mostly to jus­tify my crav­ing for doing art. So for the next 5 or 6 years I sold a lot of art in craft shows and mar­kets and met many cre­ative peo­ple. In 2003 I won the first prize award at the Sooke Fine Art Show and, around this time, I also became very ill and my fam­ily fell apart. These com­bined events made me deter­mined to pur­sue my dream.

Today the focus of my work is on ceramic art, but I also work in acrylic paint, ink, col­lage, and three-dimensional pieces and mixed media instal­la­tions. My approach to every­thing I cre­ate artis­ti­cally is through dance: when I draw I dance with line; when I paint I dance in colour; and when I work the clay, I dance with its mass. Move­ment fas­ci­nates me because it becomes an expres­sion. And I plan to keep on dancing.

Please read my artist state­ment.