In a Victorian house in the heart of the ByWard Market, where you can find one of the
finest collection of Canadian and international contemporary art.
After a career in education, curatorial and museum management (National Gallery of Canada, Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, Winnipeg Art Gallery, Canadian Museum of History), Michel V. Cheff returned to drawing and painting in 2013. His practice explores paper and canvas, placing colour at the centre of his creative process to structure space and convey emotion. His pictorial gesture, engaging the body, is inspired by Deleuze and Shusterman. Rooted in French and Quebec abstract painting as well as American post-expressionism (Staël, Soulages, Ferron, Rothko, Mitchell, Twombly), he works in contact with nature. He uses pigments, coloured earths, water from Lac de la Marche (Gatineau Valley), and binders to create works through successive layers. Each painting is a trace of the gesture and a balance between mastery, intuition, and material.
