My painting needs me in order to live; If I weren't there, it would not exist.

Jose Fillion or the urgent need to create.

The artist's journey.

For more than twenty-five years Jose Fillion worked as a designer for the best French-Canadian magazines. She was behind the images that created our desires, never far from the décor that made us dream. Artisan of the beautiful. In demand for her knowledge on many fronts, she it was who decorated, made dolls, wove, embroidered, made quilts until, one day, she wanted to find out what she, herself, had to say.

Inspired by error and by trial, she was not afraid of taking risks; the biggest risk of all was a few years ago when, at the age of 44, she gave up her security and her renown in order to move across Canada, from Quebec in the east to Victoria on the Pacific west coast, and concentrate on painting.

The work.

The deep meaning of her work reveals itself through the fusion between the artist and her canvas. The relationship may be one of complicity or antagonism, but it is always close, always a dialogue. Some days she is seduced by her work, sometimes they wage war, but every day she paints to reconcile herself with a world she is trying to tame. Jose Fillion has made her own the discipline practised by real artists: the bare canvas is her personal journal, which she lives with every day and sleeps with as best she can, because from it is born her truth. Her only guide on this quest: the urgent need to paint. Colours find their balance; marks find their place. Jose Fillion is obsessed with colour, the exact tone, her own palette—the one she imagines as she opens her eyes in the morning. By instinct her paintbrush brings out unique harmonies through which appear faces, familiar situations, dog or dish. But it is primarily a world of colour and form; themes follow later, when the artist has control of her uncontrolable inspiration. One thing is clear: this is work which knows no compromise. Authenticity is all.