"Marlbourough Native Shines"
Artwork on display at Best Western By Joan F. Simoneau Contributing Writer | Main Street Journal | Marlborough, MA
Posted March 25, 2011
Artist Michele Renée Ledoux of Evergreen, Colorado, a former Marlborough resident, was a featured exhibitor at Paradise City, Marlborough, a contemporary craft fair and fine art show, displaying the works of a collection of superlative artists. More than 500 people attended the show held at the Best Western Royal Plaza Hotel last weekend.
Among guests at the show was Michele’s mother, Joan E. Ledoux of Marlborough, a teacher at Marlborough High School for 32 years and a former city councilor. The artist is also the daughter of the late Robert Ledoux, who was a postmaster in the city and also a city councilor.
Michele is a graduate of the University of Colorado at Boulder where she studied philosophy with emphasis in Eastern Religious studies. The professional development of the self-taught artist included workshops and individual and group study with artists, printmakers, educators, accomplished poets and several Zen masters.
Ledoux’s work has been exhibited in solo and group shows both nationally and internationally, is in private collections, and has also been published. Last year, she was inducted into the National Association of Women Artists in New York City and will participate in the organization’s 122nd annual exhibition to be held in New York City during the month of May.
Her artwork “Seeking Worth” has been selected for display as a 16’x12’ billboard on the Sarasota Bayfront during the months of April and May in the “Embracing Our Differences” exhibition. The work was chosen as one of 39 from over 2,600 submissions from 48 countries and 29 states.
Ledoux’s work has also been published in the award-winning book, Harvest the Bounty of Your Career, designed by Ledoux’s creative consulting firm, Art as Endless Possibility. She was an award winner in the 2010 Highland Park (Chicago area) Fine Art Festival “Best of Show”.
Nationally, she was a finalist for Arte Laguna Special Prize for Tenuta S. Anna Estates – a competition held in the Veneto region of Italy, just outside Venice. Two artworks were on exhibition all of last year.
When asked about her technique, Ledoux said, “Free from commitment to any single style, my work reflects an ever-evolving organic synthesis of mixed media including encaustic (beeswax + damar resin), recycled materials, solarplate intaglio, photography, painting and drawing with found object framework. By means of building up and breaking down, texturing, and layering, my work seeks to scratch the surface of true human nature and, as such, often addresses social, political, environmental and spiritual matters.”
Paolo Trevisan, an art critic at Trevisan Contemporary Art in Ferrara, Italy, said, “Michele Renee Ledoux, young American artist/photographer, through her photos, reveals secrets, mysteries, stories, traces of life and poetry. She is able to freely employ and deploy the memories, her thoughts and her sensations in order to get as close as possible to the psychological sphere - those feelings, emotions and moods that make up our spiritual dimensions.”
Trevisan added, “Ledoux with her photos, shows of being an author who doesn’t pursue the objective fidelity in the photographic reproduction of nature and objects that become the subjects of her photos, but it is her eyes, her mind and all her baggage made of emotions and experiences that bring her to utilize the photograph object as subjective expressive medium. She has developed a very personal photographic research that she continues exploring and elaborating with new and renovated creativity and power.”
Ledoux will return to the area on May 24th for a one night only exhibit at the Liberty Hotel in Downtown Boston and another Paradise City presentation in Northampton, MA, May 28-30. She extends an invitation to all to stop in to see her work.
Shown below, Marlborough native Michele Renée Ledoux (right) with her mother, Joan, at the Paradise City, Marlborough event held at the Best Western Hotel last weekend.